Hironobu Kitaoka

Demand Responsive Mobility as a Service

Fundamental requirements in mobility are time, cost and comfort. Individual car ownership satisfies comfort component and to some extent, the time component as well. However, owning and maintaining a car is prohibitive for many due to cost and convenience implications. In selecting other public modes of transportation, a taxi or rental car would provide a more comfortable ride with little to none waiting time and conforms to the passengers mobility requirements. However, the cost is too high and cannot be sustained as a regular mode of transport. On the other hand, shared public transport such as bus or train is more affordable but requires the passenger to conform their schedule to a set timetable that operates no matter the changes in demand. In developing countries, however, the shared public transport alternatives do not have timetables and waiting time could be up to an hour. Recent research in shared mobility systems, specifically Demand Responsive Transport (DRT), addresses this situation. Solutions to DRT trip scheduling are constrained to the variation of DRT specifications but does not vehicle schedule and quorum specifications considerations. We aim to reduce passenger waiting time for shared mobility and propose a design of a DRT-based Demand Responsive MaaS (Mobility as a Service) model that provides centralized management and ICT support. Our design adds time constraints of vehicle schedule to the DRT problem. We propose a trip scheduling and cost sharing algorithm for our designed model and base our approach on a DRT heuristic algorithm and a quorum to enforce a minimum demand. A simulation experiment showed average waiting time reduced by 44.4% compared to other DRT time optimization solutions. We conducted a pilot study in Dhaka, Bangladesh for 4 months. Actual average waiting time reduced to 25% compared to current public transport in Dhaka.

Traffic simulator NETSTREAM for evaluation of CO 2 emissions

This paper describes a new approaching to modeling traffic flow model of traffic simulators for evaluating CO2 emissions. So far, we have developed the traffic simulator NETSTREAM (NET̲work S̲imulator for TR̲affic E̲fficiency A̲nd M̲obility). It has been able to reproduce traffic congestions in large-scale networks because of its unique traffic flow model. This paper proposes an enhancement of the traffic flow model to add acceleration as a condition, which has a great effect on the calculation of CO2 emissions. The proposed model is then verified and validated. The results indicate that it can reproduce the acceleration which agrees closely with the actual data, while maintaining the Q-K and K-V relationships. Finally, this paper shows an example of evaluating an acceleration-control system. We confirm that the enhanced version of NETSTREAM is able to evaluate environmental improvements in large-scale networks.

Simulation-based Analysis for Reducing Traffic Congestion in Real Traffic Networks by Demand Spreading over Time

The concept of demand spreading over time has been proven to eliminate traffic congestion for simple networks having one link and a single bottleneck. However, no method has been developed yet to implement this concept in real traffic networks. In this paper, the issues that arise when demand spreading over time is applied to real traffic networks are identified as the first step toward realizing its practical use. A method of solving the identified issues was examined, and its effect was evaluated using a traffic simulation. We found that the method is effective in reducing traffic jams and economic losses.

eHealth Consumer Behavior

Numerous studies have been conducted on eHealth’s structure, technological aspects, current status, problems and prospects. However, there are only a few studies conducted in regards to the consumer behavior of eHealth. This chapter describes the necessity of behavioral research in eHealth. eHealth initiatives and current status in Bangladesh is reported. The chapter also explores and analyzes the current level of, reasons behind and factors affecting consumer acceptance of Portable Health Clinic (PHC), an e-Health initiative in Bangladesh, currently serving on experimental basis. In order to conduct an in-depth consumer behavior research, a sample of 600 rural respondents has been selected through stratified random sampling method. Data has been collected through structured questionnaire survey and analyzed with statistical tools including central tendency, frequency analysis, chi-square test of association and simple linier regression. This chapter also analyzes consumer’s demographic and socio-economic factors that affect their acceptance of eHealth. Our finding says, consumer’s age, occupation and purchasing power have very strong influence on their acceptance of eHealth services from PHC while their gender, level of education, access to cell phone and previous eHealth knowledge have very insignificant or weaker impact. Finally, the major applications of behavioral research are reported through which eHealth initiatives can be more socially acceptable and financially viable.

Providing safe and affordable transportation to reduce female students dropout: A case study on college girls in rural Bangladesh

We carried out an experiment to observe the role of transportation for adolescent female students in rural Bangladesh. A senior high school (in Bangladesh, they call it a college) student spends 180-230 minutes to travel only 22km (11 km, single trip) on an average to commute from home to college. Local transport (Tomtom) stops are not always close to their home. The walk 4km to get to the nearest Tomtom stop. The Tomtom does not have a regular timetable. In worst case, the students wait 30 minutes until the Tomtom driver finds sufficient number of passengers. This 11km distance is Female students find it uncomfortable to share congested space with male passengers. They cannot raise their voice when they face sexual harassment inside the car or when they walk. The parents of the female students find it safer to stop their education and arrange a marriage. We proposed a regular college bus service with an adaptive time schedule that follows the routine of the students. In order to make the service sustainable, we designed a model of multi service vehicle named SSW, so that it can earn extra income during its idle time. We concluded that the operational cost can be covered through the SSW model. We identified new requirements for multiservice vehicle to satisfy the needs of a rural community.