Ondrej Pribyl

Industry 4.0 as a part of smart cities

In this paper, we propose the conjunction of the Smart City Initiative and the concept of Industry 4.0. The term smart city has been a phenomenon of the last years, which is very inflected especially since 2008 when the world was hit by the financial crisis. The main reasons for the emergence of the Smart City Initiative are to create a sustainable model for cities and preserve quality of life of their citizens. The topic of the smart city cannot be seen only as a technical discipline, but different economic, humanitarian or legal aspects must be involved as well. In the concept of Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things (IoT) shall be used for the development of so-called smart products. Sub-components of the product are equipped with their own intelligence. Added intelligence is used both during the manufacturing of a product as well as during subsequent handling, up to continuous monitoring of the product lifecycle (smart processes). Other important aspects of the Industry 4.0 are Internet of Services (IoS), which includes especially intelligent transport and logistics (smart mobility, smart logistics), as well as Internet of Energy (IoE), which determines how the natural resources are used in proper way (electricity, water, oil, etc.). IoT, IoS, IoP and IoE can be considered as an element that can create a connection of the Smart City Initiative and Industry 4.0 - Industry 4.0 can be seen as a part of smart cities. Interconnection of these systems can be expected to change - transport processes from design logistic processes through to their online optimization with respect to the chosen objective function and the latest information from the transport infrastructure. Linking information from process-based Industry 4.0 with intelligent transport systems of the smart city could create very effective, demand-oriented and higher productivity of manufacturing enterprises as well as sustainable development of society.

A Longitudinal Analysis of Awareness and Use for Advanced Traveler Information Systems

In this article, the relationships among technology ownership and availability, Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) awareness, and ATIS frequency of use are examined. The four main media considered are the Internet, television, radio, and telephone/other. Awareness and use of ATIS through the four media considered here are different for different users. They also change as household and person characteristics change over time. Since Information and (tele)Communication Technology (ICT) adoption is changing rapidly, this has a significant positive effect on Internet-based ATIS but not a clearly negative effect on all other media. The relationship between awareness and use appears to be nonlinear and dependent on the medium considered. Evidence of substitution between television and Internet and enhancement among other media were also found in this study.

System-oriented approach to smart cities

In this paper a new pragmatic framework covering the different challenges of smart city initiatives is provided. The authors build a theoretical foundation and formulate its consequence i.e. the needed shift from the traditional perspective into new research directions. There are many research projects addressing the different aspects of smart city initiative. The authors aim on further enhancement of this framework, to suit directly the different projects from the real life while maintain the theoretical soundness. Additionally, multiagent systems are proposed and discussed as the approach able to address the different constraints and challenges.

Mining data from induct loops

The complicated traffic situation in Prague is not only due to a rise of the number of cars in the last few years, but also due to historical formed streets which are not able to fully satisfy present traffic performances. Also the ratio of motorization is higher here than, for example, in Vienna or Cologne. Using standard methods cannot solve the enormous traffic problems - a new approach should be used. The traffic control in an area of Prague discussed in this paper is based on an adaptive control MOTION. Often, the level of service (LOS) in this area is on the threshold of saturation when the control system cannot significantly improve the situation. For this reason it has to be supported by another system, which provides information about the current traffic conditions to drivers and together create a hybrid traffic management system. Variable message signs (VMS) are used to distribute this information. This paper describes the way how information about LOS can be collected from the induct loops and distributed to the VMS. Most attention is paid to an automated mining of data from detectors. The algorithm used is based on clustering using genetic algorithms.

Individual Perception of Smart City Strategies

The term Quality of Life is essential in understanding the outcome of smart city initiatives. According to several definitions, it is one of the major objectives of activities in the area of Smart Cities. Different studies presented in this paper aim at classifying a city with respect to “smartness”. The results of all such studies however look at a general index. As discussed in this paper, quality of life is highly individual. It is not true that one measure has the same impact on the quality of life of different individuals. To understand perception of all individuals within a city is difficult but necessary, if we want to model the impact of different measures on different groups of citizens. In this paper, the authors propose a way to gain understanding on the issue of individual perception of Smart Cities. This supports the researchers not only in modeling efforts, for example using multi-agent systems, but also in selection of projects. First, so-called life stages (life cycles) are defined to address the individuality in perception. Next, an IPSCS survey is designed and mathematical tools for survey evaluation are proposed to allow for learning more about such perception. In this paper, a survey was conducted to proof the proposed concept and methods.

Transportation, intelligent or smart? On the usage of entropy as an objective function

In this paper we discuss the paradigm shift that has to be understood by the decision makers as well as societies in the field of transportation. It is not sufficient to focus only on mobility as the current strategies do, but we need to look at citizens quality of life as whole. It is affected through different aspects, and only one of them is transportation. We need to provide a better way to participate in activities - increase accessibility of goods and services. This cannot be done with look at transportation only. We need to understand the entire organism of a city. This has been recently understood by the Smart cities initiative. A smart city is defined within this paper as an alliance system, i.e. a system where particular subsystems use the common resources in a synergic way. In order to make this concept work, an objective function following the above mentioned principles must be provided. In this paper, we offer entropy of a city as a promising candidate for such objective function.

A collaborative, interdisciplinary initiative for a smart cities innovation network

A smart city is characterized by its ability to integrate people, technology and information to create a sustainable and resilient infrastructure that provides high quality services for residents. Transforming a city into a smart city requires collaborative efforts between government, industry, practitioners, residents and researchers. This paper describes how researchers in a recently formed consortium of three universities are developing a smart cities innovation network, with an emphasis on smart mobility, smart buildings, and smart bridges. The consortium is applying a semantic-based approach to address the initial challenge of building an effective interdisciplinary network of university researchers located in different parts of the world, in three cities with different sizes and stages of economic development.

Definition of a smart street as smart city's building element

Smart city covers a wide range of topics. In this paper, we introduce a basic building block able to address already on a fundamental infrastructural level several of the key user functions of a smart city. This is done on a scale that can be rather easily managed. So called “smart street” is defined and introduced as a basic building block for any smart city architecture. It does not focus on transportation only (for example through signal control and management), it covers also other aspects, such as data connectivity, safety of citizens, energy consumption and many others.

System-oriented Approach to Smart Cities

In this paper a new pragmatic framework covering the different challenges of smart city initiatives is provided. The authors build a theoretical foundation and formulate its consequence i.e. the needed shift from the traditional perspective into new research directions. There are many research projects addressing the different aspects of smart city initiative. The authors aim on further enhancement of this framework, to suit directly the different projects from the real life while maintain the theoretical soundness. Additionally, multiagent systems are proposed and discussed as the approach able to address the different constraints and challenges.

Understanding of Drivers Speed Decisions to Improve Traffic Management on Highways of the Future

Driver behaviour is a crucial factor not only with respect to traffic safety but also when considering traffic management systems. Modern Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), such as Variable Speed Limit (VSL) system, enable real time dynamic traffic management using actual traffic data. However, in order to achieve an effective system, it is crucial to provide its speed limitation decision algorithm that is based on actual driver behaviour and not on theoretical expectations. Proper understanding of the driver decision making process and driving psychology is a key to effective and resultful traffic management systems of the future. In this paper authors describe their study aiming to create a driver behaviour model with respect to VSL system based on data from driving simulator experiment. The resulting model is to be further applied to data of Czech drivers’ population in order to create background for future microsimulations of traffic and wide range of objectives connected to calibration, analysis and deployment of future VSL systems in country.