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Background: Space travel is experiencing a renaissance with expanding commercial and international efforts. Space surgery will have growing relevance as mission frequency and distances increase beyond low Earth orbit. Methods: This white paper from the SAGES Space Surgery Task Force raises awareness among the SAGES membership regarding the challenges and opportunities surrounding this emerging field that anticipates surgical care in the most extreme, austere environments. Results: Innovation in technology and preventive medicine principles will enhance the effectiveness of space surgical care when the need arises. The impact of advancements in space and terrestrial medicine to support space exploration indicates the need for a surgeon to oversee medical/surgical invasive treatment to ensure astronaut health and mission success. Advanced technology, including semi- and autonomous robotic systems, may be a preferred way to deliver this care in the foreseeable future. There is currently a need to develop training curricula and flight-compatible supplies and technology for physicians that deliver surgical care to this special patient population. The protocols and technology developed to address the unique challenges of space travel will provide value for care in space as well as in extreme, austere terrestrial environments on Earth. Conclusion: Space surgery will continue to evolve as commercial and government programs explore further into space. The SAGES Space Surgery Task Force is favorably positioned to significantly contribute to addressing some capability gaps in delivering surgical care in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eco-chemical monitoring of the snow cover in the impact zone of a pulp and paper mill was carried out. Conditional impact zones of the mill were identified. The interannual variations in their area were shown. There was a more than 50% decrease in the area of impact zones after the reconstruction of the mill. It was estimated that the seasonal features of the wind regime significantly influenced the formation of a snow pollution plume. A calculation of air mass trajectories showed a probable area of displacement of emission components from the mill. A comparison of field data on the pollution dispersion obtained during the snow cover study with data on the wind direction and air mass transport confirmed the consistency of these data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis within the research domain dedicated to the utilization of agent-based modeling (ABM) in the field of transportation. By employing specific keywords related to both agent-based modeling and transportation, we have identified and extracted 1016 scholarly papers from the ISI Web of Science database, spanning the period from 2002 to 2023. Through the application of bibliometric methods, we have systematically examined key contributors, affiliations of academic institutions, influential publications, and renowned journals within this domain. Our analysis reveals a consistent and robust growth in scholarly interest pertaining to agent-based modeling in the field of transportation throughout the considered period. Notably, within approximately four decades of ABM's application in transportation, a distinct upward trajectory began in 2008, culminating in the year 2021. The entire considered period witnessed a remarkable surge in paper production, characterized by an annual growth rate of 21.67%. Furthermore, employing an n-gram analysis, we have delineated and discussed the principal areas within transportation that have progressively benefited from the advancements in agent-based modeling. Prominently, the domains of air transport and road transport have exhibited substantial development over time, while the implications of climate change have emerged as a persistent concern throughout the entire study period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a 'future states' typology perspective (Stimson et al., 2006), the COVID-19 pandemic can be placed between unpredictable and chaotic future. Most of the forecasting models did not even take into consideration the risks of a pandemic outbreak, making their predictions useless and exposing the corresponding social-economic activities to huge perturbations, with low chances of fast recovery. When confronted with this situation, the academic environment reacted with a plethora of research studies in various affected fields. However, many of them addressed specific, narrow aspects, lacking the integrative frameworks, able to offer all-embracing views of investigated phenomena, from the forms of manifestation to in-depth, multi-sided evaluations as well as strategies and policy measures to face the entailed challenges. This paper aims to join those studies which have sought to fill this gap, proposing a comprehensive perspective on one of the most severely hit sectors by the COVID-19 pandemic, namely the air transportation. The emphasis is placed on the better understanding of the very sensitive behaviour of this sector when confronted with a pandemic crisis, as a way of increasing the preparedness to react and, consequently, to diminish the severity of negative effects. As a general note, the paper supports the orientation towards holistic, resilience/prosilience-based approaches instead of returning to the old routines, described by 'business as usual' syntagma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assume that during flights the amount of waste that is produced is limited. However, daily, approximately 8000 commercial airplanes fly above Europe's airspace while at the same time, more than 17,000 commercial flights exist in the entire world. Using primary data from airlines, which use the Larnaca's International Airport (LIA) in Cyprus, we have tried to understand why wastes are produced during a typical flight such as food waste, paper, and plastics, as well as how passengers affect the production of those wastes. The compositional analysis took place on 27 flights of 4 different airlines which used LIA as final destination. The evaluation indicated that the passenger's habits and ethics, and the policy of each airline produced different kinds of waste during the flights and especially food waste (FW). Furthermore, it was observed that the only waste management strategy that exists in place in the airport is the collection and the transportation of all those wastes from aircrafts and from the airport in the central unit for further treatment. Hence, this research indicated extremely difficulties to implement any specific waste minimization, or prevention practice or other sorting methods during the flights due to the limited time of the most flights (less than 3 h), the limited available space within the aircrafts, and the strictly safety roles that exist during the flights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates factors of importance for the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2 e) emissions generated by travellers flying for different reasons based on representative Austrian micro data for the period 2014-2016. The annual average number of flights taken by adults vary between 0.1 (visiting friends) and 0.8 (going on holiday), and the amount of CO 2 e emissions generated by each return flight is approximately 1100 kg. This leads to a total of 6 million tonnes CO 2 e emissions per year. Results of the Pseudo Poisson Maximum Likelihood estimations reveal that the amount of CO 2 e emissions created is related to socio-demographic, locational and seasonal factors, although mainly for the largest group of travellers: the holiday makers. In this group, individuals with university degrees, young persons (16-24 years) and capital city residents generate the largest amounts of emissions, as opposed to persons with children and large households. Residents of the capital region each quarter cause 64 kg more CO 2 e emissions than inhabitants of rural areas, persons with university degrees create 74 kg larger emissions than those without degrees and young adults instigate 90 kg more emissions than middle-aged persons. CO 2 e emissions of holiday flights are highest in the first quarter of the year. The importance of education is also pronounced for CO 2 e emissions related to business travel, as is gender.

Sub-Saharan African airports are struggling to meet the increasing demand for air travel generated by the region's growing economies. With their budgets spread over a range of infrastructure expansion programmes, including airports, governments have started to look at privatisation as an attractive option for shifting airport development and operations to the private sector. This paper describes the options available to airports, looks at how governments can optimise their financial returns, and examines at the advantages and disadvantages of public--private partnerships. The paper is based on the author's presentation at the ACI's World/Africa Annual General Assembly in Marrakech in November 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note discusses environmental aspects of the planning and consultation process undertaken for the UK aviation White Paper. The process as a whole has involved some three years of forecasting and assessment of the operational, economic and environmental implications of some 28 options for airport expansion at 14 UK locations. Unconstrained passenger demand forecasts have been used as a basis for the planning and consultation, and a mitigation approach to environment has predominated. This is inadequate, given the climate impacts of the forecast aviation expansion. Greenhouse gas emissions reduction should be a high priority in transport infrastructure planning, not the subject of post-hoc analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is it so difficult to find the right people to work in aviation security jobs and retain them, especially post-COVID-19? And how can we make these jobs attractive (again)? While this paper focuses on security screeners, most of the points can be extrapolated to aviation security staff, and airport staff in general. This paper takes the view that most of the reasons why we are facing staff shortages in airports were already present before the pandemic but were accelerated and amplified by it, with an additional worsening factor due to the unexpectedly quick and steep restart in passenger flights. It discusses the 'old' mindset and the fact that it cannot continue to prevail and should be replaced by a more positive, quality-oriented, human-centric one. To substantiate these opinions, the paper uses the findings of a European Union (EU)-funded project on skills and labour shortages intelligence (the INTEL project1) led by the Private Security Social Partners, illustrated by three business cases and various sources of information on best practice in attracting the younger generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Theadvanced air mobility (AAM) is defined by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as safe, accessible, automated and affordable air transportation system for passengers and cargo, capable of serving previously hard-to-reach urban and rural sites. The purpose of this paper is to focus on explaining potential solutions, under study by the authors, which could support beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations for goods delivery in a safe way. Design/methodology/approach: According to recent NASA-commissioned market studies, by 2030, there will be as many as 500 million flights a year for package delivery services and 750 million flights a year for passengers' transportation (AAM). A significant number of these aircrafts will be unmanned aerial vehicles, meaning that they are self-flying or autonomous, of which the smallest ones are quadcopters: they are relatively inexpensive and are capable to perform various tasks, such as aerial observation, crop monitoring and treatment, search and rescue, power line monitoring and goods delivery. On the other hand, there are still many difficulties in introducing them into medium- and low-risk BVLOS routine operations for goods delivery: unfortunately, there are no regulations and technologies yet that enable these operations. Findings: This conceptual paper outlines the studies about possible solutions, identified by authors, which could support BVLOS operations in a medium- and low-risk environment; in particular, the following aspects have been analysed: regulations, integrating control systems for drones, sensors (on board obstacle detection and avoidance), emergency management (emergency on ground system to identify safe landing areas), concepts of droneway (or flight corridors) and drones recovery hub. Originality/value: The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual description of the possible solutions, under study by the authors, which could contribute enabling the BVLOS operations in a medium- and low-risk environment. The paper aims describing the state of the art, terms of regulations, classifications and limitations and describing possible conceptual solutions that could guarantee safety in introducing unmanned aircraft system operations inside urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient specialized vehicle cooperative scheduling is significant for airport operations, particularly during times of high traffic, which reduces the risk of flight delays and increases customer satisfaction. In this paper,we construct a multi-type vehicles collaborative scheduling model with the objectives of minimizing vehicle travel distance and vehicle waiting time. Additionally, a three-layer genetic algorithm is designed, and the crossover and mutation operations are enhanced to address the scheduling model. Due to the numerous uncertainties and stochastic interferences in airport operations, conventional scheduling methods unable to effectively address these challenges, this paper combines improved genetic algorithm, simulation algorithm, and digital twins technology, proposing a multi-strategy scheduling framework for specialized vehicles based on digital twins. The scheduling framework utilises digital twins to capture dynamic data from the airport and continuously adjusts the scheduling plan through the scheduling strategy to ensure robust scheduling for specialized vehicles. In the event of severe delays at the airport, fast and efficient re-scheduling can be achieved. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling framework is validated using domestic flight data, and extensive experiments and analyses are conducted in different scenarios. This research contributes to addressing the optimization problem of cooperative scheduling for multi-type vehicles at airports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]