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On-ramp merging areas are typical bottlenecks in the freeway network since merging on-ramp vehicles may cause intensive disturbances on the mainline traffic flow and lead to various negative impacts on traffic efficiency and safety. The connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), with their capabilities of real-time communication and precise motion control, hold a great potential to facilitate ramp merging operation through enhanced coordination strategies. This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of the existing ramp merging strategies leveraging CAVs, focusing on the latest trends and developments in the research field.

The review comprehensively covers 44 papers recently published in leading transportation journals. Based on the application context, control strategies are categorized into three categories: merging into sing-lane freeways with total CAVs, merging into sing-lane freeways with mixed traffic flows and merging into multilane freeways.

Relevant literature is reviewed regarding the required technologies, control decision level, applied methods and impacts on traffic performance. More importantly, the authors identify the existing research gaps and provide insightful discussions on the potential and promising directions for future research based on the review, which facilitates further advancement in this research topic.

Many strategies based on the communication and automation capabilities of CAVs have been developed over the past decades, devoted to facilitating the merging/lane-changing maneuvers at freeway on-ramps. Despite the significant progress made, an up-to-date review covering these latest developments is missing to the authors’ best knowledge. This paper conducts a thorough review of the cooperation/coordination strategies that facilitate freeway on-ramp merging using CAVs, focusing on the latest developments in this field. Based on the review, the authors identify the existing research gaps in CAV ramp merging and discuss the potential and promising future research directions to address the gaps.

This study considered the dynamic equilibrium decision-making problem in a three-level supply chain comprising a manufacturer, a recycler and an echelon utilization (EchU) enterprise under the condition of cost-sharing coordination.

This study constructed a differential game model based on cost-sharing coordinated decision-making among a manufacturer, a recycler and an EchU enterprise operating under a cost subsidy. The study determined the optimal equilibrium strategies and evolutionary characteristics of subsidy mechanisms in a closed-loop supply chain. Finally, this study numerically simulated the path evolution process of vehicle battery EchU, the profit of each stakeholder and the sensitivity of parameters and verified the influences of various parameters on the overall structure and path.

The results show that a cost subsidy policy has a moderating effect on the EchU decision-making process and supply chain profit. The effect of that policy increases over time.

This study determined the equilibrium decision-making of enterprises in a closed-loop vehicle battery supply chain from a dynamic perspective, as well as the combined effects of government subsidy policies and cost-sharing coordination mechanisms.

The results have important guiding significance for coordination and cooperation between enterprises in closed-loop supply chains, for their decision-making and for the development of government subsidies.

This study considered the effects of government subsidies on closed-loop supply chains and the introduction of an EchU market to a closed-loop vehicle battery supply chain.

This paper examines the product engineering relationships between a vehicle manufacturer and six key suppliers which contribute to the final design of products. The interaction of design information between each supplier and customer is termed a design chain. The paper presents findings of the engineering design relationship between these companies and compares the different project management approaches used. Various mechanisms are used to coordinate these inter‐firm design operations. The paper emphasises a need for customers to differentiate between suppliers, based on their respective design contributions, in order to develop effective and appropriate coordination for the exchange of design and development information. The paper concludes that suppliers need to focus their project management skills on their customers’ processes to assist effective coordination, and finds that suppliers are promoting the use of guest engineers as one mechanism to deliver early participation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential of implementing a toxicity tax for heavily polluting vehicles in United Arab Emirates. A fast-changing world needs responsive policies to cope with the crisis human beings are currently facing on earth. Implementing a new policy represents a design for a change. Policies come in the form of regulations that have been officially agreed and chosen by either a political party, business or any other type of organization. This paper adopts the policy development cycle in the Australian policy handbook as a practical framework. A focus group comprising 35 participants and two decision makers thoroughly discussed each stage of the “policy development cycle”. A qualitative analysis of the data showed that there is potential for implementing a new tax to be imposed on highly polluting vehicles in United Arab Emirates (UAE) the most appropriate policy instrument in UAE is a policy enacted through restricted law; it might take more than 3 years to work; the expected tax would range between $280 and $1,100 per year; and there is concern that this new tax would slow Dubai’s preparation for EXPO 2020. These findings will help countries implement this new tax. Following the stages of the policy development cycle and their procedures will, therefore, inspire decision makers to formulate new environmental policies not only in UAE but around the world.

This research adopts the use of “focus groups” as its primary approach to data collection. A focus group is a common qualitative research technique and involves a small number of participants. The main reason for using qualitative research is because participants are asked for open-ended responses that convey their thoughts or feelings. The author of this paper served as the moderator who posed a series of questions intended to gain insight into the group’s views on the implementation of a toxicity tax for heavy polluting vehicles in the UAE. Time and attention were given to what it is that you expect to get out of focus-group research. The group was invited for one full day to a big hall and was seated around one table. The group was sometimes divided to obtain more focused views. Overall, four primary groups participated in this study. A fifth group, consisting of three senior members of a governmental agency who acted as decision makers, took part in one-to-one interviews at their place of work. Table I provides details on the backgrounds of the participant.

Research highlights the policy development cycle to investigate a new transport policy in UAE. A focus group comprising 35 participants and two interviews with two decision makers. There is potential for a tax to be imposed on highly polluting vehicles in UAE. The expected tax would range between $280 and $1,100 per year. The best policy instrument in the region is policy by law. The truck industry will be affected, and there will be a public refusal.

A new policy of implementing tax for high polluting vehicles was, therefore, discussed in this paper. Participants thought the tax would work, but an in-depth feasibility study on both microeconomic and macroeconomic aspects will be required; providing governmental incentives will help support the shift to less-polluting vehicles.

The policy development cycle was utilized as a practical framework for this research.

People were engaged into this study to make the policy viable. People will react positively to this policy.

Due to the lack of such research in this area, this paper will fill a gap in the knowledge. Moreover, the policy will be real implementation based on this publication. The findings will not only help UAE but also many countries that share same environmental and social contexts.

In the running of multiple automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in warehouses, delay problems in motions happen unavoidably as there might exist some disabled components of robots, the instability of networks and the interference of people walking. Under this case, robots would not follow the designed paths and the coupled relationship between temporal and space domain for paths is broken. And there is no doubt that other robots are disturbed by the ones where delays happen. Finally, this brings about chaos or even breakdown of the whole system. Therefore, taking the delay disturbance into consideration in the path planning of multiple robots is an issue worthy of attention and research.

This paper proposes a prioritized path planning algorithm based on time windows to solve the delay problems of multiple AGVs. The architecture is a unity consisting of three components which are focused on scheduling AGVs under normal operations, delays of AGVs, and recovery of AGVs. In the components of scheduling AGVs under normal operations and recovery, this paper adopts a dynamic routing method based on time windows to ensure the coordination of multiple AGVs and efficient completion of tasks. In the component for scheduling AGVs under delays, a dynamical prioritized local path planning algorithm based on time windows is designed to solve delay problems. The introduced planning principle of time windows would enable the algorithm to plan new solutions of trajectories for multiple AGVs, which could lower the makespan. At the same time, the real-time performance is acceptable based on the planning principle which stipulates the parameters of local time windows to ensure that the computation of the designed algorithm would not be too large.

The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is more efficient than the state-of-the-art method based on homotopy classes, which aims at solving the delay problems. What is more, it is validated that the proposed algorithm can achieve the acceptable real-time performance for the scheduling in warehousing applications.

By introducing the planning principle and generating delay space and local adjustable paths, the proposed algorithm in this paper can not only solve the delay problems in real time, but also lower the makespan compared with the previous method. The designed algorithm guarantees the scheduling of multiple AGVs with delay disturbance and enhances the robustness of the scheduling algorithm in multi-AGV system.

This paper aims to address an important question of what makes companies succeed or not in their attempt to empower employees. As this study answers this question, the arguments suggest that coordination is essential to creation of employee empowerment climate in organizations.

This is conceptual paper rooted in extensive research on both – empowerment (culture, climate and organizational structure) and coordination (formal and informal).

To help managers to be effective in their roles, this study presents four insights to creating empowerment climate. The arguments conclude that coordination provides a vessel for successful realization of empowerment. Specifically, only informal coordination (vs formal) will fully realize empowerment’s benefits. Given that the topic of empowerment is highly germane to managers in today’s context of the increasing number of employees working remotely, this work presents an important and actionable advance for managers.

This study represents original research that has not been published and is not currently under review at any other journal.

The paper aims to study the challenges and solutions of city logistics in the new retail era. The new retail, which is characterized by omni-channel, fragmented orders and decentralized 2C distribution, is becoming the mainstream of the retail industry worldwide. In order to achieve a comprehensive breakthrough in new retail, the change of order fulfillment mode is the most noteworthy issue. The aim of this paper is to design a city logistics operation model for new retail and verify its feasibility and efficiency.

A physical internet (PI) enabled two-tier city logistics solution is proposed by redefining the key facilities in city logistics with the PI concept. A “Container-as-a-Warehouse” operation mode is designed to provide a more flexible store and transfer solution. A mathematical model of the proposed solution is established. An adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) is designed based upon an iterative procedure, which ensures consistent and optimal results.

To quantitatively assess the feasibility of the proposed solution, a computational experiment is designed to compare the performance of the proposed model against the conventional two-tier city logistics operation. The effects of geographical location pattern, utilization of PI-hub as well as the fluctuation of customer orders are analyzed. The results show that the PI-enabled city logistics is more advantageous than the conventional solution.

This study does not consider the impact of new technologies in city logistics; for example, the replenishment problem of unmanned vending machines and the charging problem of electric vehicles.

The proposed PI-enabled solution and analysis results in this paper have positive guiding significance for future practical application.

Based on the concept of PI, this paper proposes an innovative and practical operation model to solve the city logistics challenges.

From the theoretical perspectives of both multi-agent systems and smart business networks, empirical studies analyzing agent-based inter-organizational systems (ABIOS) in a real-life business setting are rare. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of ABIOS on the performance of business networks.

This study presents a theoretical conceptual model portraying the influence of ABIOS on clients’ coordination structure and information architecture; and the impact of those structural alterations on business network performance in terms of the coordination, agility, and informational performances. To validate the model, a cross-case analysis was conducted in three logistics cases, namely, warehousing, freight forwarding, and intermodal transportation.

The application of ABIOS requires adjustments to the information architecture or the coordination structure, or both. Subsequently, those structural adjustments will stimulate improvements in the coordination, agility, and informational performances.

The assessment of the clients’ performance improvement is done at the company level not at an aggregate network level. Moreover, the study only covers cases from the logistics sector.

This study explains the structural consequences of ABIOS applications. The adoption of an inter-organizational system is a strategic decision that requires support from multi-stakeholders. While the applications of ABIOS can offer performance improvement opportunities, adjustments must be made to the existing coordination structure or the information architecture, or both.

This study contributes to the smart business network literature and the ABIOS literature by presenting a validated conceptual model explaining the interplay among ABIOS, the coordination structure, informational structure, and business network performance, namely, the coordination, agility, and informational performances.

The theory and practice of emergency management and homeland security continues to evolve. Specifically, public safety professionals must adopt an all-hazards approach to managing disasters and emergencies, and the creation of a safe and resilient nation is not solely the responsibility of the public safety community. Rather, it is the responsibility of the whole community. Using the Boston Marathon Bombing of 2015 as a case study, this chapter examines the extent to which law enforcement officers have embraced Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s concept of creating a culture of preparedness. In doing so, it reviews after-action reports from the incident to identify areas contributing to creating this culture as well as potential gaps and lessons learned. This chapter concludes with a set of recommendations for building and sustaining a culture of preparedness moving forward.