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Includes abstract. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; South African cities have unique spatial design challenges which can be attributed to our historical and politically charged urban planning practices. Our cities are characterised by modernist town planning principles which have fragmented communities through spatial barriers such as highways, train lines and fences while current development perpetuates urban sprawl. Due to these circumstances many contemporary urban design policies promote densification strategies through transit orientated approaches.In my thesis project, I propose to redesign Salt River Train Station into a multi modal transport interchange. I argue that this multimodal interchange can have an urban developmental and regenerative effect that can address some of the challenges faced in our urban landscape. This design report will attempt to document the processes and explorative methods that I have incorporated during this design process.

The Government of Ethiopia introduced multimodal transport system with the intention of providing seamless logistics services with reduced transaction cost. The reviews of literature show that the implementation of multimodal transport system in Ethiopia have been hindered by various problems. These problems include poor existing infrastructure and lack of basic infrastructures, congestion of dry ports, inefficient and ineffective freight vehicles, long and inefficient custom clearance process and lack of competition in multimodal transport. This study was made with the main objective of assessing the performance of multimodal transport service in Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Services Enterprise in relation to time, cost effectiveness and reliability. Primary data were collected from 138 customers and two managements through interview. Out of the 138 questionnaires distributed all the 138 questionnaires were successfully returned back. Descriptive analysis method was used to calculate the outputs (i.e. mean and standard deviation) using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. To assess the performance of multimodal transport service the performance measure were categorized in to six dimensions only for the purpose of this study. These are custom, infrastructure, competence, timelines and, competition and tracking and tracing. The findings of the research showed that the majority of customers were either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the many of performance indicator. Although the finding of the research indicated that the majority of the customers were agreed on the improvement of multimodal transport service during the past five years. Hence based on the findings of the research it is possible to conclude that inefficient custom clearance process, poor infrastructure, poor handling equipment and facilities in dry ports, inadequate port, terminal and warehouse spaces, shortage of truck, shortage of skilled manpower in logistic sector, cargo is not delivered as schedule or expected, lack of competitiveness in multimodal transport, tracking and tracing service not supported by automated or computerized system. These challenges were found to be sources of increased transit time, cost increment and unreliability. However, the enterprise has been taking stage by stage measures to upgrade the multimodal transport service quality. Therefore, the government has to invest on road, railway and dry port & terminal infrastructure and the enterprise has to equipped all the ports and terminals with modernized machineries and facilities in the future. The inland transport service should also be enhanced by acquiring latest fuel efficient and high volume vehicles. Upgrading employees professional qualification in logistic sector, create more awareness to customers to receive their cargo from the dry ports within the free time, running digital scanning machine for custom checking, computerized or automated tracking and tracing system benefits the multimodal transport in meeting efficient, cost effective and reliable service.

Today's transport policy in the world, and more specifically in Europe, is moving towards a co-modal vision. This new policy does not oppose private to public transport but encourages a combination of all modes of transportation in the hope of assuring a lasting development.We focus our study on one special service: people transport which combines all modes of public transport (train, subway, tram, bus .) and integrates new ways of car use such as carpooling (sharing a personal vehicle and the travel cost between drivers and passengers) and the EcoPartage (self-service cars in town).However, to generate a route using several transport operators, we have to check different Internet websites. This complex planning task can be very difficult and does not guarantee the optimality of the selected route.We are therefore interested in designing a support information system capable of providing comodal information linking several transport operators (public and individual).The system in question must be able to assist the user in the planning phase by offering a travelogue suggesting several possible routes; each route may include one or more transport operator (public or individual ones).In addition, it assists the user during the trip by informing him in case of disturbance and by proposing alternatives routes if necessary.This work is based on various technological developments in order to facilitate the information optimization in a distributed environment (Multi-agent - SOA) and make the information accessible to the user through a large number of media (telephone, mobile, PDA .) ; La politique des transports dans le monde et en Europe évolue vers une vision co-modale. Cette nouvelle politique n'oppose plus la voiture au transport public mais encourage une combinaison de tous les modes de transport en espérant ainsi assurer un développement rentable et durable.Nous focalisons notre étude sur le service transport de personnes qui s'inscrit au cœur des politiques co-modales en combinant tous les modes de transport en ...

The main stream of formal and informal logic as well as more recent work in discourse analysis provides a way of understanding certain arguments that particularly lend themselves to rational analysis. I argue, however, that these, and allied modes of analysis, be seen as heuristic models and not as the only proper mode of argument. This article introduces three other modes of argumen tation that emphasize distinct aspects of human communication, but that, at the same time, must be considered for the full understanding of argumentation. These modes are (1) the emotional, which relates to the realm of feelings, (2) the visceral, which stems from the area of the physical, and (3) the kisceral, which covers the intuitive and non-sensory arenas. At its most extreme the view holds that arguments may be given (almost) wholly within one mode and not be at all susceptible to those methods of argument analysis previously used. A more cautious statement allows that any interactive argument will (possibly) contain elements from various modes, and that to attempt to reduce these all to the rational is prejudiced reductionism.

"The growing mobility needs of travellers have led the development of increasingly complex and integrated multi-modal transit networks. Hence, transport agencies and transit operators are now more urgently required to assist in the challenging task of effectively and efficiently planning, managing and governing transit networks. A pre-condition for the development of an effective intelligent multi-modal transit system is the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) tools that will support the needs of transit operators and travellers. To achieve this, reliable real-time simulation and short-term forecasting of passenger demand and service network conditions are required to provide both real-time traveller information and also successfully synchronised transit service planning and operations control. Recent developments in information technology and telematics have enabled a large amount of data to become available, thus further attracting transport researchers to set up new models outside the context of the traditional data-driven approach. The alternative demand-supply interaction or network assignment modelling approach has improved greatly in recent years, and has a crucial role to play in this new context. One of the key objectives of this work is to introduce the current trends in this newly emerging area. The book will be of interest to urban planners, public transport agency technicians, Decision Support System (DSS) tool developers, students and researchers"--Provided by publisher

Traffic signal systems are an essential tool for traffic management in road networks. For the design of traffic signal control, it is not only necessary to address the diverse requirements from different road users but also to consider the various impacts on traffic flow quality, traffic safety, environment, and economic efficiency. However, current evaluation methods for road traffic signal control, such as the assessment of the level of service in guidelines and performance indices in optimisation methods, often evaluate from the one-dimensional perspective - mainly traffic-related aspects. Decisions made accordingly often lack a fair balance of different impacts on all road user groups. Therefore, this thesis aims to address this gap by developing an evaluation method for road traffic signal control that incorporates multidimensional criteria for various road users in a unified framework, hereby termed as "Darmstadt Method of Traffic Signal Evaluation (D-MoTSE)". Its applicability is analysed through case studies. As a basis for the method development, the basics of traffic signal control and evaluation methods were reviewed and discussed. The literature review concentrates on answering three questions: how to design a traffic signal program, which criteria and road user groups are relevant and how they are considered in the existing evaluation methods. Multiple parameters corresponding to traffic flow quality, traffic safety and environmental impacts are selected as the evaluation criteria in the developed evaluation method. The traffic-related parameters are distinguished for different traffic modes. The multidimensional evaluation criteria are first determined using appropriate simulation or calculation methods. Later on, they are converted into monetary values using established cost rates, and further aggregated to calculate the total cost. During the aggregation, particular weighting factors can be applied to reflect the political or planning preferences for specific criteria or road user groups. The cost and weighting factors can be adjusted dynamically under different situations. Superordinate effects that are of high significance at a macroscopic level can be taken into consideration as and when necessary and in the case that the relevant data are available. The developed evaluation method was applied to four individual traffic signal systems in the City of Darmstadt, Germany, as case studies. The results show that the number of persons that are present at a traffic signal system has a significant impact on the design of traffic signal control. The distribution of the related cost components differs significantly depending on the type of intersection and the traffic signal program. Furthermore, energy consumption and environmental costs take up at least one-third of the total cost, and therefore, should not be neglected in the evaluation of traffic signal control. The evaluation results can be used for comparing alternative traffic signal programs and selecting the optimum solution among them. Recommendations for designing traffic signal control can be derived accordingly. At signalised pedestrian crossings, integration into the coordination with neighbouring intersections can significantly reduce the delay costs for motorised private transport but may lead to higher costs for crossing pedestrians (and cyclists). A signal program with coordination is the optimum solution under the equal weighting of all evaluation criteria. Higher particular weight for pedestrians (and cyclists) is necessary to further reduce the delays for crossing pedestrians (and cyclists). However, it should be emphasised that generally particular weights should only be adjusted moderately in special cases with the support of plausible planning or political reasons. At signalised intersections, it can be observed that public transport priority can but does not necessarily cause disadvantages for the whole traffic. Instead, it leads to a shift of delays from public transport to other modes. The case studies revealed that no general recommendations can be provided for the design of traffic signal control at signalised intersections. The appropriate solution varies from case to case. A further implementation of the developed evaluation method in practice can assist transport engineers and authorities with the development, optimisation, revision and quality management of traffic signal control, both in the planning and operation stage. The chances and the challenges for its implementation are discussed in this thesis.

Water management is an important part of monitoring the natural environment and includes monitoring water quality of both coastal and inland marine locations. This covers the detection of pollution and monitoring the development of harmful algal blooms as well as coastal features and wave patterns. For many years water managers relied on field measurements for coastal monitoring and water quality evaluation. This type of sampling is quite limited on both temporal and spatial scales and is ineffective for capturing dynamic marine events, essential for increased knowledge and better decision making. It also involves costly, time and labour-intensive on-site sampling and data collection. The introduction of new policies such as the EU Water Framework Directive has increased pressure on governments to adopt new methods for continuous monitoring of all water bodies. In recent years, the use of in-situ wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for marine environmental monitoring has been developing to allow continuous real-time monitoring of the marine environment at greater temporal and spatial resolutions. WSNs have brought about great advantages and increased opportunities for environmental monitoring. The WSN concept envisages a world of ubiquitous sensing through large scale deployments of self-sustaining WSNs linked to digital communications, continuously monitoring our environment and detecting and reporting changes in its quality. However there are still several challenges remaining in the area of in-situ wireless sensor networks in order to realise this vision. Among these is the issue of data reliability and the need for a sensor network that adapts to changes in the availability and reliability of its own sensors, as it monitors an already changing environment. We are developing a reputation and trust based event detection system for environmental monitoring which incorporates alternative sensing modalities such as visual sensors (e.g. digital cameras and satellite sensing) and context information alongside an ...

In everyday life, people use internet to express and share opinions, facts, and sentiments about products and services. In addition, social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat etc., have become important information sharing platforms. Apart from these, a collection of product reviews, facts, poll information, etc., is a need for every company or organization ranging from start-ups to big firms and governments. Clearly, it is very challenging to analyse such big data to improve products, services, and satisfy customer requirements. Therefore, it is necessary to automate the evaluation process using advanced sentiment analysis techniques. Most of previous works focused on uni-modal sentiment analysis mainly textual model. In this paper, a novel Arabic multimodal dataset is presented and validated using state-of-the-art support vector machine (SVM) based classification method.