Driver injury severity related to inclement weather at highway–rail grade crossings in the United States

Objective: Previous studies on crash modeling at highway–rail grade crossings were aimed at exploring the factors that are likely to increase the crash frequencies at highway–rail grade crossings. In recent years, modeling driver's injury severity at highway–rail grade crossings has received interest. Because there were substantial differences among different weather conditions for driver's injury severity, this study attempts to explore the impact of weather influence on driver injury at highway–rail grade crossing.

Method: Utilizing the most recent 10 years (2002–2011) of highway–rail grade crossing accident data, this study applied a mixed logit model to explore the determinants of driver injury severity under different weather conditions at highway–rail grade crossing.

Results: Analysis results indicate that drivers' injury severity at highway–rail grade crossings is strongly different for different weather conditions. It was found that the factors significantly impacting driver injury severity at highway–rail grade crossings include motor vehicle speed, train speed, driver's age, gender, area type, lighting condition, highway pavement, traffic volume, and time of day.

Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that crashes are more prevalent if vehicle drivers are driving at high speed or the oncoming trains are high speed. Hence, a reduction in speed limit during inclement weather conditions could be particularly effective in moderating injury severity, allowing more reaction time for last-minute maneuvering and braking in moments before impacts. In addition, inclement weather-related crashes were more likely to occur in open areas and highway–rail grade crossings without pavement and lighting. Paved highway–rail grade crossings with installation of lights could be particularly effective in moderating injury severity.     

青藏铁路三岔河特大桥空心薄壁高墩寒季混凝土施工技术

三岔河特大桥地处海拔高、干燥多风的恶劣气候区,是青藏铁路的咽喉工程,按总体部署须跨越寒季施工,依据高墩薄臂特点,优选拆装式大模板施工方法。该项技术采用试验研究、理论计算分析、现场监测分析等手段,使现场量测与设计数据、施工管理等工程信息相结合,并反馈于施工过程中。利用成熟度法对砼早期强度进行预测和估算,以确定下道工序的时间和对混凝土质量进行预测;采用双层保温层及内置供热系统形成高原高寒高墩薄臂负温混凝土保温加热养护技术;选用塔吊配合整体拼装式模板的高墩施工技术,成功解决空心薄臂高墩快速连续施工和寒季砼加热养护的难题,实现了高墩流水化、机械化作业。以温度为主线的信息化监控技术是该技术成果的创新内容,该创新成果对于高寒地区,尤其对青藏铁路、青藏公路桥梁下部结构施工具有广泛应用和借鉴价值。     

影响大气污染物散布的气象条件

大气污染物的空间分布以及随时间的变化，与气象条件密切相关。影响大气污染物散布的气象因子主要有：风、湍流，大气稳定度，太阳辐射，云，降水，天气形势，混合层高度及大气运动的尺度等。文章论述了风，大气稳定度，太阳辐射，云和天气形势对大气污染物散布的影响，以有复杂地形上的空气污染与局地气象条件的关系，目诉在于寻求有效防治大气污染的途径。     

Investigating hazardous factors affecting freeway crash injury severity incorporating real-time weather data: Using a Bayesian multinomial logit model with conditional autoregressive priors

Introduction: It has been demonstrated that weather conditions have significant impacts on freeway safety. However, when employing an econometric model to examine freeway crash injury severity, most of the existing studies tend to categorize several different adverse weather conditions such as rainy, snowy, and windy conditions into one category, “adverse weather,” which might lead to a large amount of information loss and estimation bias. Hence, to overcome this issue, real-time weather data, the value of meteorological elements when crashes occurred, are incorporated into the dataset for freeway crash injury analysis in this study. Methods: Due to the possible existence of spatial correlations in freeway crash injury data, this study presents a new method, the spatial multinomial logit (SMNL) model, to consider the spatial effects in the framework of the multinomial logit (MNL) model. In the SMNL model, the Gaussian conditional autoregressive (CAR) prior is adopted to capture the spatial correlation. In this study, the model results of the SMNL model are compared with the model results of the traditional multinomial logit (MNL) model. In addition, Bayesian inference is adopted to estimate the parameters of these two models. Result: The result of the SMNL model shows the significance of the spatial terms, which demonstrates the existence of spatial correlation. In addition, the SMNL model has a better model fitting ability than the MNL model. Through the parameter estimate results, risk factors such as vertical grade, visibility, emergency medical services (EMS) response time, and vehicle type have significant effects on freeway injury severity. Practical Application: According to the results, corresponding countermeasures for freeway roadway design, traffic management, and vehicle design are proposed to improve freeway safety. For example, steep slopes should be avoided if possible, and in-lane rumble strips should be recommended for steep down-slope segments. Besides, traffic volume proportion of large vehicles should be limited when the wind speed exceeds a certain grade.     

自动气象站与人工温湿度计观测温湿度的对比研究

在我国,地面自动气象观测系统正在逐步取代常规人工观测的器测项目。从气象学和气候学以及各行各业的观点来看,为了得到新旧两种观测系统间的差异,将他们所获取的资料进行对比是非常必要的。在进行大气探测自动化进程中,需要一定时间的平行观测,在统一的气候资料存档和管理原则下,对观测资料进行质量评估,使之得出的气象数据更精确、可靠。为更好地为大气自然环境试验提供环境数据保障,通过一个月的自动气象站温湿度与人工的温湿度计数据的对比,得出在显著水平α为0．05时,两种观测结果无明显差异。     

中国高温热浪对碳排放量的响应

基于中国碳核算数据及气象资料,分析了8大经济区(30个省份)近20a来(1997～2017年)碳排放量和高温热浪的本底变化特征,探讨了不同区域高温热浪对碳排放量的多尺度响应关系.结果表明:(1)研究时段内,8个经济区的碳排放量均显著增加,增速最大和最小的经济区分别为黄河中游和西北;(2)不同级别(轻度、中度和重度)高温...     

城市高层建筑大气颗粒物污染和噪声垂直分布特征

以空气颗粒物和噪声为研究对象,利用颗粒物监测仪和噪声仪,研究了颗粒物和噪声在不同天气状况下以及垂直方向上的变化规律,结果表明,(1)在0～56m之间,TSP、PM_(10)随高度增加而减小,56～116m之间随高度增加而增大.低空中的PM_(2.5)、PM_1相差不大,而100 m以上高空中的PM_(2.5)、PM_1污染程度明显大于地面.(2)天气条件影响颗粒物污染程度.晴天和大风天颗粒物的污染相对较轻,阴天时污染最重.(3)L_(eq(A))随高度增加而增大,最高点(116 m)处的噪声比地面高约4 dB.晴朗和阴天条件下,噪声差别不大;在大风天气条件下,高层建筑顶层的噪声污染较重.     

A climatology of regional background ozone at different elevations in Switzerland (1992–1998)

The ozone records of several monitoring stations in Switzerland from 1992 to 1998 are investigated with respect to the variability observed during regional background conditions, i.e. conditions with little detectable local or regional-scale influences as evident by NO_x and CO concentrations. The sites cover different altitudes between 490 and 3600 m asl. They are characteristic of near-surface conditions, the top of the planetary boundary layer or residual layer, the complex atmosphere in an alpine valley, and the free troposphere. The results reveal a distinctly different ozone variability (diurnal cycles, seasonal cycles, trends) during regional background conditions compared to all days. The estimated annual average ozone concentration under these conditions is between 33 and 50 ppb, dependent on altitude, with a spring maximum and an autumn/winter minimum. Differences in background ozone are found depending on the synoptic weather type. For all sites a positive ozone trend is calculated for background conditions that is larger than for all data. For the latter, the trends appear to be stronger positive for the last 7 years than for the last 11 years.     

Numerical estimation of photovoltaic–electrolyzer system performance on the basis of a weather database

We performed a numerical simulation to investigate the performance of a photovoltaic (PV)–electrolyzer on the basis of a simulated weather database during the summer solstice (SS), autumnal equinox (AE), and winter solstice (WS), and all year round. First, we selected a location in southern Taiwan (latitude: 22.65°N) to create a local weather simulation database that included daily solar radiation, wind speed, and ambient temperature. The I–V curves of a PV system and an electrolyzer were obtained numerically by using Simpson integration computation. Subsequently, the optimal configuration of a PV driving system comprising the electrolyzer and the PV panel was determined. The database of weather conditions was input into the numerical estimation model of the PV–electrolyzer system, and the hydrogen generation rates and hydrogen production volumes under both clear skies and changeable weather conditions were obtained.     

雾霾天气预测中支持向量机的应用分析

支持向量机在对非线性复杂问题进行处理的过程中,展现出来的优势特征非常突出,本文针对雾霾天气预测中支持向量机的应用做出了进一步探究,对支持向量机的概念、支持向量机的基本思想、建立雾霾预测模型、预测试验给出了详细的分析。