Domenico Walter Edvige Mongelli

Models of Choice between Shopping and E-Shopping

In the era of the new economy, research on freight transport and logistics in urban areas can not ignore the impact of the internet on society. From the point of view of e-commerce, the Web is joined in the daily life of the Italians not only for the growing opportunities to shop at better conditions than the other channels, but for the enormous possibilities that the Internet provides for those who has time, desire and interest to search the site data and useful information to make more effective shopping for a product or a service. The effects of these changes on the transport demand are manifold: on the one hand, the use of virtual activities replaces a series of physical movements, on the other hand the individual who carries out these activities virtually could use the time saved to perform other tasks or perform another type of movement. No less important are the impact of e-commerce on the distribution, since the online purchasing determine, in a specific area, a number of points to be served with high variability and, therefore, quite different from the default items identified by the traditional commercial structure of that area. In the present work some studies on the effects of e-economy and e-commerce on passenger transport and freight transport are detailed and the processes of acquisition of the database for the development of a behavioral model for simulating consumers choices about e-shopping and shopping in trade are defined. The model allow to predict the effects of new technologies on consumers habits and act on demand, focusing on services that may mark the success of innovative approaches to the management of urban transport. The specifications, calibration and validation of models to choose between e-commerce and physical commerce are presented.

A co-operative methodology to estimate car fuel consumption by using smartphone sensors

AbstractThe European Commission has recently promoted research programs aimed at finding solutions to the ever more compelling problem of air pollution from road vehicles and has also indicated a better sustainability among the possible impacts of co-operative Intelligent Transportation Systems. In fact, many practical solutions can be developed that allow drivers and management to optimise resources and to contain costs and the emissions of pollutants by applying communication systems between vehicles (Vehicle-to-Vehicle – V2V) and between vehicles and infrastructure (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure – V2I). Along this mainstream this paper present a co-operative system which offer drivers the ability to manage their consumption and driving style, suggesting corrections to the usually adopted behaviour. The new contribution of this paper is both the co-operative approach between drivers to achieve a common goal of a better common energy consumption strategy and a methodology to estimate fuel consumption just by...

Freight Transport Demand Models for Applications in Urban Areas

Nowadays vehicles committed to the distribution of goods in urban areas are a significant load on transport infrastructure in terms of congestion, accidents, noise and air pollution. We can no longer think about intervening through the construction of infrastructure: sooner or later the new infrastructure will be congested, and externalities will increase with traffic growth. It should, however, point to a careful examination of the structural factors of mobility, ie the understanding and reading of demand, rather than focusing exclusively on the offer. Analysis of mobility demand, and therefore trends and characteristics of the entities that actually move and produce mobility, is essential to deal with the best management of a transport system and, at the same time, of a territory. The paper provides a review of freight transport demand models for applications in urban areas. A methodology for evaluating freight transport in medium-sized cities is proposed in order to enable the determination of the quantity of goods handled, distinguished by type, and the number of vehicles used for this purpose. In this paper the focus is on the fruit and vegetable sector and a survey method for an urban area of medium size is illustrated. The data collected made it possible to calibrate models to estimate the demand for freight transport in urban areas.

Ecosmart and TutorDrive: Tools for fuel consumption reduction

The European Commission has recently promoted research programs aimed at finding solutions to the ever more compelling problem of air pollution from road vehicles and has also indicated among the possible impacts of cooperative Intelligent transportation a better sustainability, by cutting down pollutant emissions and reducing consumptions. In fact many practical solutions will develop that allow drivers and managements to optimize resources and to contain costs and the emissions of pollutants by applying communication systems between vehicles (V2V) and between vehicles and infrastructure (V2I). Along this mainstream this paper present a cooperative system which offer drivers the ability to manage their consumption and driving style, suggesting corrections to the behavior usually adopted. The new contribution of this paper is the cooperative approach between drivers to achieve a common goal of a better common energy consumption strategy. Since the fuel consumption has to be evaluated with regards to the specific vehicle type the system is based also on crowdsourcing of the specific vehicle consumption performances. The paper describes a system that gathers data on fuel consumption from the cooperating drivers that by can build together the data set necessary to the system itself and accept this new paradigm: crowd sourced cooperation for a better world.

EcoSmart: An Application for Smartphones for Monitoring Driving Economy

nstantaneous consumption models are designed to provide an accurate description of fuel consumption by relating the instantaneous rate of consumption with the vehicle acceleration, speed and the engine dynamics. In principle, instantaneous consumption models allow users to calculate the fuel consumption for any profile of vehicle operation. Some kind of models that take into account only driving dynamics can be used to describe the variability of consumption. The procedure used by this type of models is to establish reference matrices (related to specific time intervals) that for each combination of speed and acceleration determine the rate of fuel consumption. This paper Describes the design of a mobile application for the estimation of consumption, and user behavior, that applies models of instantaneous consumption. A preliminary experimental survey has been the carried out to obtain a large data base related to the acquisition of cinematic and engine parameters to allow the development of the mobile application. The experimental acquisition of parameters was accomplished in dynamic driving, connecting the OBDII port to different models of vehicles. With this procedure, reference matrices of fuel consumption for each specific class of emission (as required by ECE 15.03 - Directive 78/665/EEC and ECE 15.04 - Directive 83/351/EEC) have been obtained. The mobile phone application, after receiving as input the vehicle specifications provided by the user, can associate the specified matrix of consumption to the cinematic parameters (instant speed and acceleration obtained by GPS measures) and by using each pair of speed and acceleration can give an estimate of consumption values. At the end of the trip the user can take view of all device information on consumption also by geo-displaying the information on a map (showing the path and the related point by point consumptions). The output of the system, that can also provide information related to the dynamic behaviour and energy management in the user guide style, have been confronted with real consumption data. The advantage of the application is to estimate fuel consumption and driving style, from just GPS data, without connecting the phone to OBDII port.

Vibrational Comfort on Board the Vehicle: Influence of Speed Bumps and Comparison between Different Categories of Vehicle

This paper shows the results of a study conducted on five different categories of vehicles in a specific test site. The aim was to investigate how the effect of the test site discontinuity determines variations of comfort related to the increase in speed and to the five selected road vehicles of different classes. Measurements were obtained by combining data relating to vibrations in the three reference axes, detected through a vibration dosimeter (VIB-008), and geolocation data (latitude, longitude, and speed) identified by the GPS inside a smartphone. This procedure, through the synchronization between dosimeter and GPS location, has been helpful in postprocessing to eliminate any measurement anomalies generated by the operator. After the survey campaign it was determined that a formulation allows defining a Comfort Index (CI) depending on velocity and five vehicles of different classes. This study showed that the presence of speed bumps, in the test site investigated, appears to be uncomfortable even at speeds well below those required by the Highway Code.

EcoSmart: A Survey and Sector Analysis of Mobile Phone Application Market for Fuel Consumption Reduction

The spread of Smartphones and Tablets has led to the birth and the development of a new business: mobile applications on smartphones. Mobile telephonys continuous growth implies a large number of users that can access all applications of online stores. Mobile business is evolving continuously and offers applications that grant many different innovative services and at the same time mobile business offers many opportunities of development for companies and corporations because participating this new sector is becoming more and more required to improve performances and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is a quantitative analysis of the smartphone application market through a survey of users desires and an analysis of different mobile application features and business models. The results of the survey provide a full representation of the mobile market potential, with a focus on the applications that work on fuel consumption reduction and road safety. In this framework an evaluation of the presented application EcoSmart is carried out. The application estimates users fuel consumption and returns conclusions about his driving style (with focus on fuel consumption). The user can also review offline his paths and the geo-localised driving style data thanks to the Smartphones GPS. The EcoSmart application replaces the OBD device and the consumption data, that can be obtained from the car engine, approximating fuel consumption just based on the dynamic of vehicle motion that is evaluated on GPS data. This procedure is simple and innovative. This study provides a demand survey for this kind of services and a sector analysis. The survey has been carried out using traditional market research methods, with a qualitative approach that is used to understand users habits of purchase and users desires. The second one was realised investigating the applications which are similar to EcoSmart on the Apples Appstore and the Google Play Store, analysing their features and how they can be distributed to the users.

Co-operative ITS: ESD a Smartphone Based System for Sustainability and Transportation Safety

Abstract Co-operative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) are emerging rapidly due to recent development in Global Navigation Satellite System GNSS systems and mobile internet. The main goal of these systems is to improve traffic conditions and safety level on the road networks. With the rapid growth of smartphone technologies and mobile internet, C-ITS based on smartphone may contribute increasingly in vehicle data collection and in traffic safety and sustainability issues. This paper, extending previous research results, explores the possibilities of using smartphone applications coupled with a central server GIS (Geographic Information System) web system to contribute to traffic safety and to reduce fuel consumption. The idea of a co-operative system in which GPS (Global Positioning System) enabled smartphones are capable to acquire individual vehicles kinematics is extended to take into account both safety and fuel consumption issues. Information in the system is shared on a web server for promoting more sustainable and safe driving styles. The co-operative system allows drivers to examine information about their individual driving style and consumptions allowing a better use of the road. Road operators can use the system to find critical points on the network and to promote traffic safety.

An integrated prediction model for traffic noise in an urban area

Traffic noise is an inevitable phenomenon associated with traffic operation in urban areas. The increasing sensitivity to environmental issues leads researchers to study and formulate appropriate models to analyze the correlations between environment-infrastructure-man. In this area of research attention has been paid to issues related to noise pollution, how is attested to by the vast amount of literature on the subject. In particular, the traffic noise of motor vehicles, as main source in urban areas, makes up part of general environment problem which inflicts serious damage to the health of human beings and lowers their labor productivity. Due the increasing number of vehicles circulating in the big cities, the noise pollution becomes a problem because of the constant traffic on the roads makes some places reach the highest level of noise. Therefore, the control of traffic noise has become a matter of major concern for communities trying to maintain a satisfactory environment in which to live and work. To ensure a high quality environment, methods for prediction the urban traffic noise are necessary tools. In order to modeling traffic noise and selecting corresponding noise control measures it is necessary to know functional relationships between noise emission and certain numbers of traffic parameters. The purpose of this article is to study the situation in Crotone (Italy) and develop a model to predict the noise based on the data collected. The result of this research will contribute to the analyze the traffic noise in urban center as well to develop a tool to help on treatments of this urban issue, allowing future decisions to reduce the noise pollution.

An Integrated Approach for Studying the Safety of Road Networks: Logistic Regression Models Between Traffic Accident Occurrence and Behavioural, Environmental and Infrastructure Parameters

The current tendency is to attribute the cause of each road accident to certain factors that, closely related, define a system whose crisis points can construct serious elements of danger for road safety. The situation then becomes complex when it is impossible to attribute the cause of an accident to a sole component of the system ‘driver – vehicle – environment – infrastructure’, because more than one problem is present when investigating the path leading up to an event and it is unclear in what measure to hold the driver responsible for actions that have risked his or her own life, and in many cases, the lives of others. This is a problem that cannot be solved by assigning closed formulas when the investigation of different locations presents diverse characteristics and the variables in play can change even slightly from case to case in the same network under study. In this article, logistic regression models are proposed to evaluate the reliability of a roadway, where it is understood as a probability that a driver travels along a path in a specific period of time and in specific operative conditions, without an accident with injury or death occurring. The analysis has been conducted globally, placing in contemporaneous correlation infrastructural, environmental and behavioural components. The models have been applied to a stretch of freeway and state roads in the province of Cosenza (Italy) by defining the seriousness of the accidents that occurred.