By Bobby Du & Paul-Antonin Dublanche
An efficient and reliable public transit system plays an important role in mitigation of congestion and attraction of more users from private car. However, sophisticated traffic condition and dynamic travel demand often make public transit services unstable and uncertain, which results in longer waiting time especially during peak hours or special events. One common phenomenon called bus bunching (BB) or platooning usually happens when the headway between successive buses arriving at the same bus stop is less than the scheduled headway or a certain threshold. BB is a major source of congestion, which not only causes passengers’ travel time delayed and extra waiting time, but also degrades the bus operation performance. Most of the prior researches on BB were limited in a single or multiple bus lines, consequently, only a few studies were found that focused on the whole bus network in a city or even larger region. Recent advances in big data create new opportunities for exploring BB problem in a large-scale scope.
By Sarah Dunn
Natural hazards have the potential to cause large-scale impacts and disruption to all countries and if these events occur in highly populated areas the impacts can be catastrophic. This has been shown by previous earthquake events in Christchurch and Haiti and by hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. The severity and lasting impact of these hazards are often linked to the resilience of critical infrastructure systems (including: water distribution networks, electrical systems and transportation networks) which underpin our communities and support social and economic development. These systems are currently being subjected to a multitude of challenges – from a changing climate, to increasing population demands and economic austerity. Therefore, we need new approaches to assess and manage the resilience of these critical systems.
By Carole Adam
The SWIFT project (funded by University Grenoble-Alps) investigates the somewhat irrational behaviour of citizens confronted with wildfire risk in Victoria. It relies on survey data from the Bushfire Research Commission created after the Black Saturday fires in 2009, to design a realistic model of this behaviour. An initial model focused on the mismatch between objective and subjective values of both the level of risk and the individual ability to face it; it proved valid against behaviour statistics, and also showed good explicative power despite its apparent simplicity, at the level of the global population. This model was also used to investigate the effects of different communication strategies.
By Arnaud Banos
The Post-car Ile-de-France project (funded by Mobile Lives Forum, SNCF) investigates the hypothesis of an abrupt transition towards lifestyles that depend less on the use of personal vehicles. Its main goal is to explore with people the possible impacts of this scenario on their lifestyles and on the way we should design cities and territories. In such perspective, a serious game prototype has been developed, allowing gamers to interact with a virtual simplified urban environment, in order to explore the possible impacts of a drastic limitation of the use of personal vehicles on urban life. That first step has a very precise purpose: opening up people’s mind by letting them face – in a friendly and intuitive way led by personal experimentation – the multiple constraints they would face as urban actors in such situation. Building this shared common baseline is crucial in the perspective of engaging public participation of citizens, planners and deciders.
By Peter Bridgewater, McKinnon-Walker Fellow
As we moved towards the end of the second decade of the C21st it is clear we are in the era of the Anthropocene –even if geologists are still undecided when – or even if – there is such a thing. Irrespective of the geologists we are certainly in a different era from even 50 years ago, and this necessitates a different way of thinking and viewing our environments, from the wild to the urban…
By Dr Sean Wilkinson
Infrastructure is so ubiquitous and reliable that most people do not realize that it is even there. But when we do get a failure in one of our infrastructure systems, well then we really do notice. Think about the last time there was a power cut, or you were caught in a traffic jam – or worse, you could not access social media. It is amazing how upset most people get when they don’t have access to the services that our infrastructure usually provides – even for a short time.
By Jack (Jie) Yang, Jun Ma & Sarah Howard
Technological innovation in schools has, as yet, resulted in relatively limited teacher and student engagement with new ways of learning supported through information and communication technologies (ICTs). One of the possible reasons for this is that educational research has struggled to grasp the complexity or dynamic nature of technology integration. Data mining techniques have drawn the attention of researchers from the education research area to understand some of the complexity of technology integration within a theoretical system model of technology integration. Continue reading
By Dr Johan Barthelemy
Groundwater and rock are intensively exploited in the world. Given the population density and environmental pressures, quarry lateral extension may be limited. Hence the only solution for the rock operators is to excavate deeper as long as the deposit structure makes it possible. Consequently the water table of the geological formation exploited might be reached when the quarry is deepened. A dewatering system is therefore installed so the quarry activities can continue, possibly impacting the nearby water catchments. Continue reading
By Professor John Sören Petersson
In today’s world with ever more systems and services constantly released, designing human-machine interaction is a must. The problem with interaction design is not that we are not good at interaction. Social skills vary across individuals, but seeing two strangers, possibly even without a mutual language, making up a mutual understanding step-by-step clearly indicates the human ability to interact and thus to shape interaction. Continue reading
By Joe Branigan
Australia’s ongoing productivity performance and standards of living depend fundamentally on efficient and high quality infrastructure. Perhaps no other area more directly showcases the quality of current and past government administrations than decisions on public infrastructure — including how it is planned, prioritised, funded and delivered. Continue reading