Search

Increasing traffic demands in urban areas lead to higher risks of accidents and car crashes, constituting a treat for road users like drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. Intersections are a sensitive part of the road infrastructure, due to the conflict points caused by traffic flows with different directions. Latest technology allows the management of intersections thanks to intelligent systems like Autonomous Intersection Management (AIM), along with other smart devices like CAVs, remote sensors, and optimization algorithms. Hence, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) provide a significant contribution in enhancing the safety levels in transportation infrastructures including road intersections. The implementation of these systems involve professionals of diverse backgrounds, spacing from civil to ICT engineering, and even to social, behavioral and financial studies. ITS still present some weaknesses that prevent them from becoming widespread and of common use, mainly related to costs and required computational power. Future research could be directed towards the development and refinement of algorithms, but also to the production of new sophisticated hardware and construction systems for road infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building Information Modeling (BIM) can be tracked back to the 70s and has become more widespread over the last decades, expanding from residential projects to other sectors like transportation infrastructure; its application ranges from the design phase to maintenance management and operation control, providing enriched models with data that can be exchanged among professionals of different industries. Thanks to Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) technology it is possible to collect technical data for transportation infrastructure, along with an efficient control of transportation systems like traffic flows with sophisticated algorithms. BIM and ITS can be combined together and further implemented with other technologies like Geographic Information System (GIS); this can be done thanks to IT tools like Unified Modelling Language (UML). The integration of BIM with ITS, especially if considered within a larger scheme like Smart Cities or smart transportation networks, facilitates operations such as the management of Intelligent Road Intersections, monitoring structural safety of bridges, or managing the maintenance activities of airport runways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In last decades cities were subjected to an important increase of inhabitants, then significant changes occurred on communities livability related to several aspects as urban mobility and information management. In order to handle the rising demand recent technological innovations as IoT (Internet of Things) or ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) resulted to have a key role for an efficient and safe management. Then such process that makes cities able to ensure a high quality data management for citizens and equipped with technological devices lead to a concept named "|atSmart City". The latter has various definitions that changed in relation to specific studies that were carried out by researchers, however between various actors that characterizes a smart city a key role is represented by AVs (Autonomous Vehicles) that in recent years had a significant spread on market. AVs operation in addition with a smart city environment allows to achieves high quality standards in terms of urban mobility related to service quality and safety. It is possible to state that AVs operation and smart city environment are complementary, because AVs cannot obtain high performance levels without a context equipped with appropriate technological devices and smart cities have to guarantee an efficient and safe mobility to be considerate as such. In this paper it will be carried out an analysis of smart cities main characteristics and developments, taking into account mainly the relation with AVs spread and the benefits that the latter are able provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID pandemic has abruptly changed people habits and lifestyles worldwide, including the usage and perception towards all the different transportation systems; to this date (mid-2021), the pandemic has been going on for over a year now, and there is still no certainty about when it will end. A drastic decline in the number of commercial flights both national and international has happened, as a consequence of the lockdown policies adopted by the various countries around the globe in order to prevent the infection from spreading around, and with variable trends depending on the period and the reciprocal agreements between the various states. Land-side public transportation too has witnessed a backlash mainly due to similar policies or even not leaving home during lockdowns, often working remotely from home, and switching from public transportation to driving, walking or cycling if necessary. COVID-19 and transport are linked by a two-way relationship: if it is true that COVID-19 impacts on transport systems, it is also true that transport systems, in turn, have a very important role in the spread of the pandemic. Swabs first and vaccines recently, are raising new hopes about the pandemic ending soon. The consequences of COVID-19 will in any case be significant, and will revolutionize the way of conceiving transport, meaning new challenges for scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design phases of any type of infrastructure need the intervention of several techniques and professionals figures in order to achieve an optimal efficiency during realization phases and then for the infrastructure life cycle, considering that in such contexts there is a cooperation of several figures it is important to facilitate and speed up operations regarding creation of models, calculation and files information sharing. In order to meet these needs it was implemented the so called BIM, a new method that allows software interoperability and integration among various processes, BIM's acronym stands for "Building Information Modeling" and it is defined as a "digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of an object". Thanks to such model it is possible to integrate data of different aspects (structural, architectural, management, energy) realizing a model that is characterized by all useful information as dimensions, materials or costs that will not be lost or divided during file transfer. These skills allowed BIM to spread quickly, especially for advantages linked to better costs and times management so that benefits involves also the reduction of CO2 emissions in fact to promote such objective many countries as Norway, USA, Singapore and UK have incentivized BIM use for AECO (Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner and Operator) industry aiming to reduce 80% of emissions in 2050. The use of BIM for infrastructure has a positive and important trend so that it is starting to be introduced also in countries legislation as a fundamental design criteria, and in future it is expected to become mandatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays cities are subjected to an urbanization increase, such phenomena has several consequences that affect different topics but especially regard urban mobility, because of this increase the number of people using cars rises consequently congestion and CO2 emissions increase. The rise of private vehicles circulating creates a decrease of average speed travel that affect the entire city context so its liveability, then when a high number of vehicles moves into infrastructure that was not designed for that capacity probability of collision will increase due to the elevated interaction compromising people safety. For this reasons public transport systems represents a key role in the liveability of a city because most of them operates in reserved areas and moreover decrease the number of private vehicles moving in cities. The progress that automotive was subjected to affected also urban mobility, first of all the innovation that mainly involved public transport regarded the use of electric vehicles instead of fossil fuels ones, that had a significant environmental impact on bus public transport systems that used fossil fuels vehicles. Anyway the most important innovation that in the last decade is involving automotive regards autonomous vehicles (AVs), these new technologies represent an important change for public transport efficiency due to the elevated performance so the relevant reduction of human mistakes, then because of the high precision of headways would provide a high quality service. Taking into account that each public transport systems has its own characteristics in relation to vehicles type and configuration, the introduction of autonomous vehicles requires specific adjustments and changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The improvements made over the years in automotive transportation field are significant, between them the most relevant is the one related to autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and regards several aspects as performance, comfort, low emission but especially safety. Such aspect represents the one that mostly motivated research studies because according to international data roadway accidents is among the first ten causes of death in the world, in order to outline the importance of this problem it can be considered that every year all over the world roadway incidents cause between 20 and 50 millions of injured people wich from an economical point of view costs at least to an amount corresponding to 90% of global GDP (gross domestic product). In most cases the reason that causes an accident is human mistakes, that is why it is useful to equipe vehicles technologies and systems so to achieve the goal of correct as much as possible human mistakes. It is expected that since 2035 there will be a quantity of autonomous vehicles of 75% then the economic impact on automotive sector since 2030 is expected to be around 71 billion with a global market of 44 million vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil Infrastructures regardless sector they belong to as hydraulic (dams, pipelines), transport (bridges, roadways) or building represent a fundamental element for our lives quality and improvements then considering the continuous technological progress, existing infrastructures have to be adjusted in order to cohabit with innovations or to be complementary to new constructions. For these reasons it is important to guarantee their complete efficiency with correct maintenance operations but especially monitoring ones so to forecast imminent damages, considering that during its life cycle a generic infrastructure is subjected to dynamic and various loads, deterioration of materials and atmospheric agents that can compromise its functionality. Such aspects result fundamental considering that in many developed countries as Europe most of existing bridges were realized in world war two decades, then for example in USA 70% of roads and bridges was realized before 1930s while in Japan majority of bridges was built in 1970s. Nowadays technologies used for monitoring interventions or inspections are several but most of them are intrusive and require the need of certified human operators, these aspects create a significant safe risk and cost increase both for operators payment and equipment, then the service that an infrastructure has to provide is compromised as for example traffic interruption for bridges. In last decades to solve critical issues due to operators cost and safety or services interruption, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) commonly known as drones were used for monitoring operations, such systems have several advantages mostly because they are not intrusive and do not require a human operator. For these reasons especially due to cost reductions, UAVs for civil engineering infrastructure are expected to reach €40 billion market worth in next decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]