The Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011 caused disruptions to transportation network such as roads and railways. In general, transportation network disruptions make distribution of relief goods difficult and are considered to have negative impact on the economy of the stricken region owing to a decrease in transportation accessibility. Focusing on Iwate Prefecture, which...

The procurement of transportation services is an important task for shippers because of the need to control costs at the same time as providing high service levels. When shippers with goods and/or materials to transport seek transportation services from outside companies they typically put out a request for quotes from a set of carriers. They then assign contracts based on negotiated service ch...

There are a number of important societal problems that resist conventional, i.e., centralized, solutions. The problems affect the management of our economic systems, climate, energy systems, transportation systems, telecommunication systems, and infrastructure. They are characterized as being distributed and many-faceted, with a large number of interdependent components. For example, the routes...

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has been widely used in many industries. In the medical environment, especially in some emergency situations, UAVs play an important role such as the supply of medicines and blood with speed and efficiency. In this paper, we study the problem of multi-objective blood supply by UAVs in such emergency situations. This is a complex problem that includes maintenance of...

In recent years, freight transportation emerged as a key factor in the development and dynamicity of countries, although it has a considerably impact on urban areas, due to the environmental issues. In this context, several stakeholders have implemented City Logistics solutions in order to make transportation more sustainable and efficient. This paper proposes a case study concerning the collab...

1 ABSTRACT Digital Graffiti is an open, extensible platform for mobile location-based services that context-sensitively supports travelers using public transportation on their individual travel routes across transportation companies. The personal mobile phone of each traveler automatically checks for connecting transportation options, shows their current locations and triggers re-planning on de...

Here we consider the problem of dynamically assigning vehicles to transportation orders that have di¤erent time windows and should be handled in real time. We introduce a new agent-based system for the planning and scheduling of these transportation networks. Intelligent vehicle agents schedule their own routes. They interact with job agents, who strive for minimum transportation costs, using a...

This essay discusses the preliminary results of recent archaeological investigations into stone axe production and exchange processes at a Neolithic hilltop settlement in South India. The site in question comprises a stone-lined circular structure situated on a plateau area on the side of a topographically complex hill, known locally as Hiregudda. Across the plateau, extensive surface scatters ...

Recent technology change and market liberalization have substantially reduced the costs of providing international message telephone services (IMTS). However, the full extent of these cost reductions have generally not been reflected in lower prices. This paper reviews the recent literature on international telecommunications markets, and examines regulation and IMTS pricing behaviour. Particul...

This paper describes a multimodal transportation network (MTN) in which several unimodal networks (AGVs, hoists, lifts, suspended monorail systems, etc.) interact each other via common shared workstations as to provide a variety of demand-responsive workpiece transportation/handling services. The set of transport modes provides connection support for production flows treated as agents trying to...