Coordination and Optimization Control Framework for Vessels Platooning in Inland Waterborne Transportation System

Vessels sailing in a single platoon could reduce resistance from the perspective of the whole platoon and the individual vessel, and contribute to improving energy benefits. Moreover, transportation energy costs and traffic efficiency are essential indicators for measuring waterborne transportation systems. We attempt to minimize...

Morphological wave attenuation of the nature-based flood defense: A case study from Chongming Dongtan Shoal, China

The risk of coastal storm flooding is deteriorating under global warming, especially for the heavily urbanized deltaic cities, like Shanghai. The Nature-Based Flood Defense (NBFD), as an eco-friendly design alternative for hard infrastructure against coastal flooding, is gaining attention. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of saltmarsh due to...

Hard or soft flood adaptation? Advantages of a hybrid strategy for Shanghai

Flood risk is expected to increase in coastal cities, particularly in Asian megacities such as Shanghai. This paper presents an integrated modeling framework to simulate changes in the flood risk in Shanghai and provide a cost-benefit analysis of multiple adaptation strategies used to reduce risk. The results show that the potential flood...

Eco-efficiency assessment of technological innovations in high-grade concrete recycling

The increasing volume of Construction and demolition waste (CDW) associated with economic growth is posing challenges to the sustainable management of the built environment. The largest fraction of all the CDW generated in the member states of the European Union (EU) is End-of-life (EOL) concrete. The most widely applied method for EOL concrete...

Estimation of network level benefits of reliability improvements in intermodal freight transport

An important problem in the assessment of reliability benefits of transport projects is that link level improvements must be translated to network level, so that they can be economically valued based on users’ trips from origins to destinations. For intermodal transport, shipments follow a chain with more than one mode. Generally, this requires...

Multidisciplinary design optimization of large wind turbines: Technical, economic, and design challenges

Wind energy has experienced a continuous cost reduction in the last decades. A popular cost reduction technique is to increase the rated power of the wind turbine by making it larger. However, it is not clear whether further upscaling of the existing wind turbines beyond the 5–7MW range is technically feasible and economically attractive. To...

Creating incentives to prevent intentional execution failures

When information or control in a multiagent system is private to the agents, they may misreport this information or refuse to execute an agreed outcome, in order to change the resulting end state of such a system to their benefit. This may result in execution failures. When only information is private, mechanisms such as VCG use payments to...