Highway Area Research Articles

Research on ecological investigation and evaluation of highway area in mountainous area based on RS and GIS

With the development of economy, the road construction of our country gets a rapid progress. Especially in mountain roads, the influence of road construction on environment has increasingly been focused. The environmental problems of road construction on project are mostly embodied in those problems of water, air, and ecology. landscape, this paper is taking the Baise-Leye highway as the study area, using the remote sensing and GIS technique to investigate the eco-environment. With RS, GIS, from Remote sensing analysis and ecological degradation degree evaluation, comprehensive consideration of the ecological characteristics, economic and cultural development level, environmental pollution prevention, etc. Investigate and study the ecological status of roads before and after highway construction. Provide a basis for the rational presentation of ecological restoration measures, system of highway ecological landscape by using 3S technology and analytic hierarchy process.

Risk assessment of seismic landslides based on analysis of historical earthquake disaster characteristics

Risk assessment of seismic landslides in potential earthquake zones is important for construction in mountainous areas. To present a new method for conducting risk assessment of landslides, data of 720 landslides caused by the Ludian Ms6.5 earthquake, which occurred in 2014, are taken as a sample, and five impact factors are selected as risk assessment indexes; these factors include the slope, slope direction, elevation, strata lithology, and peak ground acceleration. Fractal theory and the result of the landslide distribution analysis of the Ludian earthquake are adopted to calculate the weight of each impact factor. The proposed risk assessment method is established by calculating the landslide distribution density. Under an assumed earthquake, the method is used for conducting risk assessment in the Dayong Expressway region; the topography and geology of this region are very similar to those of the Ludian County. The landslide risk zoning in the region can be obtained using the K-means cluster method to classify the risk level after the assignment of the landslide risk index. The result shows that a 2.25-km route of the Dayong Expressway has the highest risk of geological disasters with an occurrence probability of 1.1% considering the influence of the Chenghai fault. The assessment results can provide a scientific basis for disaster prevention in the Dayong Expressway area.

EVALUATION OF HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION IMPACT ON ECOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT OF QINGHAI-TIBET PLATEAU

This study is designed in order to determine the impact of Zhadao highway construction on ecological environment of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, by comparing the quality of ecological environment before and after highway implementation. An index system of ecological environment impact evaluation of highway area is established, including terrain slope, vegetation coverage, desertification index and land use type. With the help of data mining and grey correlation degree theory, an ecological environment comprehensive evaluation model of multi index is proposed. This study analyzes the scale score of each evaluation index, and establishes a quantitative ecological environment evaluation model for highway areas in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Taking Zhadao Highway in study area as an example, the state before and during the construction of the highway in 2014 and 2017 is selected for comparing and analyzing. The results show that the ecological environment in study area is obviously affected by highway construction. Significantly changed sections are concentrated in construction areas and urban residents densely populated area along the highway. Affected by factors such as highway earthwork and human activities, soil erosion has intensified, vegetation coverage has decreased, desertification has become more severe, and the overall quality of the ecological environment changed from superior to inferior.

Research of Plant Carbon Fixation and Oxygen Release

Expressway service area is an important facility to provide various services for drivers and passengers on the expressway. With the rapid development of expressways in China and the continuous improvement of construction technology and operation level of service areas, more and more attention to the landscape design and plant ecological benefits of service areas. Based on the investigation of the capacity of carbon fixation and oxygen release of green plants in the service area of expressway, combined with the needs and characteristics of each functional area in the service area, this paper puts forward the basic principles and methods of low-carbon ecological landscape construction in the service area, studies the green plant combination mode in the service area, and improves the service level of green landscape and low-carbon ecology in the service area.

Crash-Prone Section Identification for Mountainous Highways Considering Multi-Risk Factors Coupling Effect

In order to identify crash-prone sections of the highways in mountainous areas professionally and exclusively, the common phenomena of “sharp turns”, “continuous long downhill”, “multiple tunnels”, “dangerous roadside environment”, and complex and changeable meteorological environment, which all imply risk factors of the mountainous highways, are comprehensively considered. Utilizing the improved classical coupling model, the coupling mechanism of the risk factors is revealed, and the coupling model of the traffic risk factors is constructed, by which the coupling degrees of multi-risk factors couplings are calculated respectively. Based on the coupling degrees of the above factors, the concept of vehicle operation risk index (VORI) of the mountainous highway is introduced and its numerical value is quantified as the basis for identifying the crash-prone sections. The 21 km of Songming to Huize section of the Songdai Highway in the Yunnan Province of China is selected as an example, and the good applicability of the identification model is verified.

Physiological Characteristics and Nonparametric Test for Master-Slave Driving Task’s Mental Workload Evaluation in Mountain Area Highway at Night

With the rapid development of advanced mobile intelligent terminals, driving tasks are diverse, and new traffic safety problems occur. We propose a new research on physiological characteristics and nonparametric tests for the master-slave driving task, especially for evaluation of drivers’ mental workload in mountain area highway in nighttime scenario. First, we establish the experimental platform based driving simulator and design the master-slave driving task. Second, based on the physiological data and subjective evaluation for mental workload, we use statistical methods to composite the physical changes evolution analysis in a driving simulator. Finally, we finished nonparametric test of the drivers’ psychological load and road test. The results show that in compassion with the daytime scenario, drivers should pay much effort to driving skills and risk identification in the nighttime scenario. Thus, in the same driving condition, drivers should bear the higher level of mental workload, and it has been subjected to even greater pressures and intensity of emotions.

Assessment of the ecological state of soils in roadside territories using chemical and biological indication

Chemical and bioindication studies of soils in the roadside areas of railways and highways have been carried out. The studies have shown that on the territories directly adjacent to the transport routes, the concentrations of the petroleum products in soils are 1.6-32.4 times exceeding the APC (approximate permissible concentration). The most substantive exceedances of the APC are recorded in the highways roadside spaces. We have investigated the dependence of the petroleum products concentration in the soils and their bioindication indices on the distance to transport routes. It has been established that the pollution of roadside soil by petroleum products decreases sharply at a distance of 10-15 m from transport routes. And bioindicators show different dynamics with increasing distance from the source of pollution (and, consequently, decrease in concentration of petroleum products in soils): the intensity of respiration of soils increases, and catalase activity decreases, which reflects its characteristic as an enzyme of stress.According to bioindication data, it has been shown, that the soils of the roadside space (especially, as for railways) retain high restorative potential.

Research on Wireless Charging System of Electrical vehicles in Scenery Complementary Expressway

With the increasingly prominent global environmental and energy issues, the development of new energy electrical vehicles has become more and more important. In order to solve the problem of poor endurance of electrical vehicles, this paper studies the establishment of a wireless charging system for electrical vehicles based on the principle of wind-solar complementarity in the service area of long-distance driving of electrical vehicles, making full use of the environmental advantages of highway areas, and converting light energy and wind energy into electric energy for the use of electrical vehicles to achieve the purpose of electrical vehicles’ endurance.

Optimal Power Allocation and Capacity Analysis for D2D-Enabled Vehicular Communications

Wireless Communication is important to recover transmitted information by accommodating reliable Information flow to allow safety, mobility and environmental applications. In cellular communication resources are shared with the users to improve spectral reuse and enhance channel capacity. Device-to-Device (D2D) communication has become a promising technology for wireless engineers to optimize the network performance. In vehicular environment, the design of resource allocation schemes for D2D-enabled networks need to be properly addressed because of the fast channel variations due to high mobility. In this work, Radio Resource Management (RRM) for D2D-based V2X (Vehicle to Everything) communications including both vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication are implemented. Power is allocated based on slowly varying large-scale fading information of wireless channels of LTE standard The objective is to maximize the ergodic capacity of V2I connections by ensuring reliability for each V2V link. Sum ergodic capacity of all V2I links is first taken as the optimization goal to maximize the general V2I link throughput. Minimum ergodic capacity maximization is then taken into consideration to offer a more uniform capacity performance throughout all V2I links. Various algorithms that gives optimal power allocation are proposed and compared. Here, the capacity maximization between highway areas and urban areas are compared and concluded that capacity maximization will be higher in urban areas then on highways.

Optimal Power Allocation and Capacity Analysis for D2D-Enabled Vehicular Communications

Wireless Communication is important to recover transmitted information by accommodating reliable Information flow to allow safety, mobility and environmental applications. In cellular communication resources are shared with the users to improve spectral reuse and enhance channel capacity. Device-to-Device (D2D) communication has become a promising technology for wireless engineers to optimize the network performance. In vehicular environment, the design of resource allocation schemes for D2D-enabled networks need to be properly addressed because of the fast channel variations due to high mobility. In this work, Radio Resource Management (RRM) for D2D-based V2X (Vehicle to Everything) communications including both vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication are implemented. Power is allocated based on slowly varying large-scale fading information of wireless channels of LTE standard The objective is to maximize the ergodic capacity of V2I connections by ensuring reliability for each V2V link. Sum ergodic capacity of all V2I links is first taken as the optimization goal to maximize the general V2I link throughput. Minimum ergodic capacity maximization is then taken into consideration to offer a more uniform capacity performance throughout all V2I links. Various algorithms that gives optimal power allocation are proposed and compared. Here, the capacity maximization between highway areas and urban areas are compared and concluded that capacity maximization will be higher in urban areas then on highways.

Retention of microplastics in sediments of urban and highway stormwater retention ponds

Urban and highway surfaces discharge polluted runoff during storm events. To mitigate environmental risks, stormwater retention ponds are commonly constructed to treat the runoff water. This study is the first to quantify the retention of microplastics in the sediments of such ponds. It applied state-of-art FTIR-methods to analyse the composition, size, shape, and mass of microplastics in the range 10–2000 μm. Seven ponds serving four land uses were investigated, and the results are related to catchment characteristics, sediment organic matter content, and hydraulic loading. We have not found a correlation between the microplastics abundance, polymer composition, size distribution and the land use in the catchment, as well as the sediment organic matter content. Both the highest (127,986 items kg−1; 28,732 μg kg−1) and the lowest (1511 items kg−1; 115 μg kg−1) accumulation of microplastics were found in the sediments of ponds serving industrial areas. There was, however, a correlation to the hydraulic loading of the ponds, where the sediments of the highest-loaded ponds held the most microplastics. This study shows that sediments in stormwater retention ponds can trap some of the microplastics and prevent them from being transported downstream. These systems need to be considered when assessing the fate of microplastics from urban and highway areas.

Short-term Vehicle Speed Prediction by Time Series Neural Network in High Altitude Areas

Vehicle driving conditions at high altitudes are quite different from those in plain areas. Accurately predicting the speed of vehicles traveling at high altitudes is of great significance for the development of vehicle safety assisted driving. In order to study the vehicles’ speed of highways in high-altitude areas, and predict the speed of vehicles accurately, more than 30 000 data were collected by a medium-sized SUV in Qinghai under typical adverse environmental conditions. The real-time vehicle status data (engine speed, engine torque, transmission gear, throttle opening), road alignment data, and historical vehicle speed data was denoised by wavelet method. The collecting data is time-varying and nonlinear characteristics. A nonlinear auto-regression with exogenous inputs (NARX) dynamic neural network prediction model was established in this paper to fit travel speed. The network model after training has small error and high fitting degree. The accuracy of vehicle speed prediction in the next five seconds is 96.01%. The root mean square error of prediction is less than 2.21 km/h, which can achieve better prediction effect. At the same time, the transplantability of the model is enhanced by taking altitude and road alignment as variables.

Soil nitrogen and phosphorous dynamics by in situ soil experiments along an urban-rural gradient in Shanghai, China

An in situ soil experimental system was designed to determine how urbanization impacts soil nitrogen and phosphorus dynamics. Variables including the road density, normalized difference vegetation index, distance to the nearest highway and industrial area from the soil experimental site, land use impact index, population density, population change index, total population, and percentage of water area were used to quantitatively explain the soil nitrogen and phosphorous contents. The results showed that the total phosphorous in the soil increased slowly after September 2013, indicating a phosphorous accumulation phenomenon in the soil in urban areas. The nitrate nitrogen in the soil had a higher value in September 2013, while the soil ammonium nitrogen content was higher during the winter. Moreover, the soil ammonium nitrogen content was higher than the nitrate nitrogen content during most of the experimental period. The distance from the urban centre, road density, proportion of built-up land, and population density can explain the soil nutrient dynamics quantitatively, showing that 45.4% of the soil nitrate nitrogen content, 84.1% of the soil ammonium nitrogen content, 44.6% of the ratio of NO3/NH4, 58.1% of the ratio of total inorganic nitrogen (TIN)/total phosphorous (TP), and 81.6% of the TIN could be explained by one of these variables at most. The potential factors affecting the changes in soil N contents include changes in human dietary habits as more people migrate to cities and industrial wastewater discharge. This study is helpful in quantitatively understanding the urbanization process and associated environmental impacts.

Assessment of trace elements concentration in road dust around the city of Kuala Lumpur

This study aimed to assess the concentrations and health effect of heavy metals (Cd, Cu, Cr, Ni, Pb and Zn) in road dust of selected locations in the city of Kuala Lumpur. Sampling was conducted for three times at four locations namely Jalan Tun Razak, Jalan Raja Abdullah, Jalan TAR and Jalan Ayer Molek. The concentration of heavy metals in road dust was analyzed by using ICP-MS. The study found that Jalan TAR has the highest concentrations for the heavy metals Cd (0.23 ± 0.04 mg/kg), Cu (116.39 ± 38.77 mg/kg), Ni (83.29 ± 23.66 mg/kg), Pb (43.53 ± 7.00 mg/kg) and second highest for Cr (34.69 ± 3.57 mg/kg) and Zn (86.22 ± 23.07). The pollution level of heavy metals in road dust were assessed by Pollution Index and Pollution Load Index, showing that all locations are highly contaminated except Jalan Ayer Molek. Health risk assessment was determined to access the health effect of carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic to adults and children caused by exposure of heavy metals in road dust. Based on the integrated HI for children at all locations are more than 1. Indicating great chance of non-carcinogenic effects. All incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILTCR) values for adult and children at all locations are within acceptable limit. Traffic and activities that take place in these four locations are the sources of heavy metals. Jalan TAR which is loaded with commercial activities is the most polluted location followed by Jalan Raja Abdullah (commercial area), Jalan Tun Razak (highway area) and Jalan Ayer Molek (residential area).

고속도로 휴게소의 지역 활성화 공간에 관한 연구 - 특산물판매시설을 중심으로 -

고속도로 휴게소의 지역 활성화 공간에 관한 연구 - 특산물판매시설을 중심으로 -

Extraction and utilization of landfill gas

DeponiGasTeknik DGT AB is a consulting firm working in the Environment and Energy sector. A special field is to design and develope plants for extraction and utilization of landfill gas. Amoung the plants that DeponiGasTeknik has designed through the years are a new compressorstation in Helsingborg. Other interesting projects are the fixed link across Öresund where DeponiGasTeknik has design a system on the old landfill to prevent gas to penetrate the railway and highway area. An other project is the digestercells in Växjo which are a development of the common biocells. Finally are an example presented on the closed digesters that DeponiGasTeknik has designed in Helsingborg for around 30 000-40 000 m3 waste per year.

Biogas from organic wast: case studies

DeponiGasTeknik DGT AB is a consulting firm working in the Environment and Energy sector. A special field is to design and develop plants for extraction and utilization of landfill gas. Among the plants that DeponiGasTeknik has designed through the years are a new compressor station in Västerås. Other interesting projects are the fixed link across Öresund where DeponiGasTeknik has design and now testing a system on the old landfill to prevent gas to penetrate the railway and highway area. An other project is the testing of digester cells in Växjö which are a development of the common bio cells. Finally is an example presented on the closed digesters that DeponiGasTeknik has designed in Helsingborg for around 300 000-400 000m3 waste per year.

Evaluation of Carbon Fixation and Oxygen Release Capacity of Greening Plants in the Expressway Carbon Neutral Service Area

To make the service facilities of Yunzhan expressway becoming the first carbon-neutral Expressway energy-saving and emission reduction demonstration service area in Guangdong Province, utilize the function of carbon sequestration and oxygen release of forest to reduce the carbon emissions of Expressway area and improve the atmospheric environment. Based on the investigation of plants in Yunzhan expressway Service Area of Guangdong Province, the carbon fixation and oxygen release capacity of plants in service area were investigated and evaluated by Li-6400 portable photosynthetic apparatus. It can be concluded that the ability of carbon fixation and oxygen release of plants is related to their own species structure, and is also closely related to the amount of plant green. Broad-leaved trees have large leaf area, so transplanted trees can play a greater role in carbon fixation and oxygen release.

公路路域中汞污染研究进展小结

公路路域中汞污染研究进展小结

Impacts of infrastructure development in the villages of Batang Regency in terms of social, economy, education, and health

The increase of village fund since 2015 led to the Indonesian government’s expectation for economic growth and more infrastructure development in villages, with the hope that the villagers’ quality of life will improve. This research aimed at analyzing the impacts of infrastructure development in Batang Regency, Central Java in terms of social, economy, education, and health aspects. Data was collected via structured interviews. The focus of the research is to identify the differences of impacts on infrastructure development based on 2 categories. The first category is the 3 geographical zones: the borders of the north coast Trans Java highway network (Pantura), mountainous area and coast area. The second category is based on the villagers’ duration of stay in their village: more than 10 years and less than 10 years. Based on the geographical zone research results, there were differences found in the impacts on social aspects, but none in the economy, education, health and education aspects. In the length of stay category, there were no differences in the impacts resulted from the infrastructure development on either the social, economy, education, or health aspects.