This contribution deals with the problem of designing the optimal structure of most public service systems, where the total discomfort of all users is to be minimized. Such combinatorial problems are often formulated as weighted p-median problem described by a location-allocation model. Real instances are characterized by considerably big number of possible service center locations, which may take the value of several thousands. In such cases, the exact algorithm embedded into universal optimization tools for the location-allocation model usually fails due to enormous computational time or huge memory demands. Mentioned weakness can be overcome by approximate covering approach based on a radial formulation of the problem. This method constitutes such solving technique, which can be easily implemented within commercial IP-solver and enables to solve huge instances in admissible time. The generalized system utility studied in this paper follows the idea that the individual users utility comes from more than one located service center. This approach constitutes an extension of previously developed methods, where only one nearest center was taken as a source of individual users utility. Hereby, we study and compare both exact and radial approaches from the point of their impact on the solution accuracy and saved computational time.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel7/6863138/6868673/06868713.pdf

Computational study of radial approach to public service system design with generalized utility

Recent studies have emphasized the necessity of educating creative engineers. This paper aims to provide a literature review by answering what strategies can be applied to develop creativity in engineering education. As the literature demonstrates, creativity has been studied by a diversity of perspectives such as psychology, social psychology and sociology. Studies on engineering creativity indicate the importance of problem-solving skills for engineers. For developing creativity, strategies such as using thinking tools, learning by solving problems and building learning environment conductive to creativity have been suggested in engineering education. Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a strategy of developing creativity. So characteristics of PBL, learning cycle in PBL and methods for enhancing group dynamics in PBL are discussed in this paper. In addition, Aalborg University in Denmark is introduced as an example of PBL strategy.

/pdf/teaching-engineering-students-creativity-a-review-of-applied-2yj7jzcgih.pdf

Teaching Engineering Students Creativity: A Review of Applied Strategies

In 2001 the European Commission defined the main rules of the expected changes of modal split in the White paper. Modal split is also a crucial question in urban areas, where transport has the greatest effects on living standards and environment. Due to the caused pollution, noise, health effects every stakeholder tries to make urban public transport as efficient as it is possible. This is a theoretical investigation which aims to analyze the production function of Budapest Public Transport in Hungary. In this paper the transport data of Budapest were used to create a model in which the effects of different production factors can be estimated and the public transport performance can be forecasted.

/pdf/analysis-of-public-transport-performance-in-budapest-hungary-172ku5bqk6.pdf

Analysis of Public Transport Performance in Budapest, Hungary

The aim of this study is to present a new software tool which was developed to project activity, energy use and CO2 emissions in the transport sector. The ForFITS ( For F uture I nland T ransport S ystems) program was designed to help policy makers to create long-term transport strategies based on forecasted sustainable emission parameters. This article contains information about the basic methodology of the software and shows how useful the simulations are. With using ForFITS – after collecting the required data – scenarios of future vehicle stocks, costs, energies used and emissions can be calculated, analyzed and compared. The product of the UNDA project is available for any authority freely so it seems like ForFITS cannot have a competitor in the market.

/pdf/forfits-a-new-help-in-transport-decision-making-for-a-3784or8vau.pdf

ForFITS: a New Help in Transport Decision Making for a Sustainable Future

This paper analyses the effect of supporting the public transport policy based on intersection controlling with the aim of tram priority in Budapest, as a case study. The hypothesis related to this study was that the support of public transport is only viable when the marginal benefit of public transport is higher than the marginal cost of individual transport. Therefore, the real costs of this support for the society were estimated. This study revealed that by applying this policy, the waiting time at intersections and CO2 emission-related costs have increased by about 13.7% and 14.2%, respectively. Besides, the estimated monetary gain of tram users would be 17,800 euro on a daily level total by applying the mentioned policy.

/pdf/economic-investigation-of-a-public-transport-support-policy-4vcv4ldc50.pdf

Economic Investigation of a Public Transport Support Policy: A Case Study at Budapest

Municipalities with extended administration, in which public administration offi ces are located, were selected within the frame of public administration reform (Act No. 344/1997 Coll., on the Territorial Arrangement of the State and Establishment of Higher Territorial & Administrative Units). These municipalities with extended administration partly substitute the function of district authorities. The selection of municipalities was carried out on the basis of criteria set by the government and political subjects. From the point of view of citizens, the most important criterion for the dislocation of public administration branch offi ces is the transport availability. Nevertheless, transport availability was not paid relevant attention in the decision making process in question. This fact becomes more and more important in connection with the growing problems related to ensuring regional transport. The paper deals with the creation of a mathematical model of the optimisation of branch offi ces dislocation and subsequent implementation. The solution of this model has three outputs. The fi rst output is the evaluation of the contemporary state from the point of view of accessibility of branch offi ces. The second one is the sensibility analysis of accessibility depending on the number of branch offi ces. The third output is the post-optimisation analysis, which brought about numerical expression of the relationship between the cost of running a branch offi ce and losses due to citizens travelling to municipalities with extended administration.

/pdf/optimization-of-municipalities-with-extended-competence-3vagd92j9o.pdf

Optimization of municipalities with extended competence selection

The main purpose of the paper is to present theoretical findings suitable as a support of decision-making on economic sustainability and accessibility of public transport. Czech experience with solving this problem is taken into account. The paper focuses on the relationship between two of three pillars of public transport sustainability – social and economic. Accessibility of public transport service for the clients is considered the main feature of the social pillar. Three types of accessibility are taken into account: spatial, time and economic. Indicators of all three types are presented and their role is studied in details. The main factors influencing the indicators are described. It is shown that, usually, strengthening the social pillar is then weakening the economic one. Further, the public transport accessibility issues are discussed in the most complicated case – in the weak demand areas. Demand Responsible Transport (DRT) is presented as an efficient and effective tool in maintaining t...

/pdf/support-of-decision-making-on-economic-and-social-31tlbs1m6b.pdf

Support of decision-making on economic and social sustainability of public transport

The paper deals with one of problems of universities education – with problem of admission process. The classical entrance examinations, common in the last years, were nowadays substituted by modern method – by learning potential tests (LPT). The question whether it is possible to forecast the study results on the base of the LPT results arises at this moment. Two samples of students are analysed in this paper, students who were admitted in the years 2010 and 2011. The relation between study results and results of LPT provided by the private company Scio is analysed in this paper. The hypothesis, that the better results in learning potential test are the warranty of better study results at the university, was examined. To verify this hypothesis both correlation and regression analysis were used. The insignificant correlation was detected between results in learning potential test and study results. Similarly the regression coefficient had value close to zero. The relevant dependence between the learning potential test and study results haven´t been demonstrated and the hypothesis showed to be quite incorrect.

/pdf/relation-between-results-of-the-learning-potential-tests-and-3v7lyn0g3o.pdf

Relation between results of the learning potential tests and study results

Fighting poverty and social exclusion constitutes one of the European Union’s main goals. The 
EU understands the word “poverty” to connote insufficient income and unequal access to social 
wealth.
The solution to this problem is considered so crucial that on 12th December 2007 the European 
Commission designated year 2010 to be the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social 
Exclusion. In order to reduce poverty, a common understanding of the root factors is necessary.
In the article we examine affected households in Slovakia and Czech. Then we analyse the influ-
ence of significant factors for poverty. Our analysis is based on data collected during a project in 
Slovakia and Czech EU SILC 2006.
Later this article deals with multivariate evaluation regions of Slovakia and Czech in 2006. Be-
cause the input selected indicators of poverty are dependent, we have to transform the dependent 
indicators to a smaller set of independent principal components and then carry out the evaluation. 
The result is evaluation of regions according to different point of view poverty. 
In the next analysis we focused on evaluation of Slovak and Czech regions according to the size 
of individual component scores (dimension). We used a graphic presentation of achieved results 
too. By according results of this analysis is possible to state, that they exist man sized differents 
among regions of Slovak and Czech republic from point of view poverty. The worst situation is on 
east of Slovakia and on south of Slovakia too. In Czech Republic they are the most poverty-stricken 
regions on Moravia and on north of Czech. In both of them is the best situation in capital sities 
and neighbourhood from point of view poverty. They are superior to economic forwardness and 
standard of living in comparison with others regions. Result from analysis is that economic growth 
concentrated in only some regions and others regions came to growth of unemployment. The 
unemployment sent down ability of households to face financial expenses. In Slovakia it showed 
dependency of poverty from education.

/pdf/aplikacia-viacrozmernych-metod-pri-merani-chudoby-3h1jlukkd2.pdf

Aplikácia viacrozmerných metód pri meraní chudoby

The analyses of insurance risks are an important part of the project of Solvency II preparing of 
European Commission. The risk theory is the analysis of the stochastic features of non-life insu-
rance business. The field of insurance risk theory has grown rapidly. There are now many papers 
and textbooks, which study the foundations of risk processes along strictly theoretical lines. On the 
other hand there is a need to develop the theories into forms suitable for practical purposes and 
to demonstrate their application. Modern computer simulation techniques open up a wide field of 
practical applications for risk theory concepts, without requiring the restrictive assumptions and 
sophisticated mathematics, of many traditional aspect of insurance risk theory..
Modelling the size or loss is of crucial importance for an insurer. Particular attention is paid to 
studying the right tail of the distribution, since it is important to not underestimate the size (and fre-
quency) of large losses. The method of maximum likelihood is often used to estimate parameters 
of possible distributions, and various tests may be used to assess the fit of a proposed model (for 
example Kolmogorov-Smirnoff, and 
χ
2 goodness-of-fit. Often one may find that a mixture of various 
distributions may be appropriate to model losses due to varying characteristics of both the policies 
and policyholders.
The objective of this article is to call attention to a new approach to statistical modelling using 
quantile functions. This approach can deal with many issues associated with the steps of the sta-
tistical modelling process based on quantile methods.
 The definition and modelling of loss distributions in non-life insurance is one of the problem are-
as, where obtaining a good fit to the extreme tails of a distributional model is of major importance. 
It is a thesis of this article that the use of models based on quantiles provides an appropriate and 
flexible approach to the distributional modelling needed to obtain well-fitted tails.
 We are specifically interested in modelling and simulations the tails of loss distributions Thus is 
of particular relevance in reinsurance if we ale required to choose or price a high-excess layer. In 
this situation it is essential to find a good statistical model for the largest observed losses.

/pdf/simulations-of-the-extreme-losses-in-non-life-insurance-4izpsr5sv6.pdf

Bohdan Linda

Papers

Optimization of municipalities with extended competence selection

Support of decision-making on economic and social sustainability of public transport

Relation between results of the learning potential tests and study results

Aplikácia viacrozmerných metód pri meraní chudoby

Simulations of the extreme losses in non-life insurance