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  • The Whole System: Mobility-as-a-Service - Data mining: the key to making Mobility-as-a-Service work?

    The Whole System: Mobility-as-a-Service - Data mining: the key to making Mobility-as-a-Service work?

    To make this new idea work, travellers and providers will have to pool a lot of data. Making it safe and reliable is a big task The challenges of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) extend beyond the transport system itself and include protection of individuals’ personal data and agreements on the distribution of revenue. For Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) to work, it will require considerable sharing of data. This will allow MaaS to build a picture of the totality of the traveller’s requirements and plug into the infrastructure of transport service providers, such as journey planning, booking and information. This will give would-be passengers real-time information relevant to each transport service in a particular journey. No getting away from data sharing The dependence of MaaS on data sharing…

  • The Whole System: Mobility-as-a-Service - A MaaS-sive possibility?

    The Whole System: Mobility-as-a-Service - A MaaS-sive possibility?

    Can a new approach to moving people around be a ‘win, win’ for people, the economy and the environment all at the same time? In a future carbon sustainable, net-zero world, people will still want, and probably need, to travel. This prompts the question, ‘how?’ From a Systems Engineering (SE) perspective, one answer would be Mobility as a Service (MaaS). What is MaaS? The UK’s Government Office for Science (citing the Transport Systems Catapult and UK Parliamentary records) describes MaaS as: ‘digital interface to source and manage the provision of a transport related service(s) which meets the mobility requirements of a customer’. MaaS is a system that provides a single point of organisation for a journey, providing options to use any part of the existing array of transport services…

  • The Whole System: Transport Energy - Transport and Energy, Natural Partners?

    The Whole System: Transport Energy - Transport and Energy, Natural Partners?

    At first glance, the Energy and Transport sectors appear to be made for each other. Look closer and there are major obstacles to making anything more than a marriage of convenience Integrating our energy and transport systems involves overcoming numerous business, commercial and technical challenges. Paradoxically, neither segment is set up to meet the needs of the other. Each has a strong instinct for where the boundaries between them lie. As such, the greater barrier to combining these fields is cultural. Energy and Transport ‘Transport Energy’ is both what we use to power our transportation systems and the way we use it. How this is done affects the UK in three areas; environmental, economic and energy security, which converge on each other, often acting in opposition. Between…

  • The Whole System: Safety Loss Driven Systems - As safe as we can make it

    The Whole System: Safety Loss Driven Systems - As safe as we can make it

    How Loss-Driven Systems Engineering (LDSE) can revolutionise approaches to safety and loss. What is Loss Driven Systems Engineering? Safety is an essential guiding concept underpinning the engineering of all transport systems. This can be understood as the absence of unreasonable risk of harm to the health of people. With the surge in connected systems since 2010, the related concept of security (especially cybersecurity), has come sharply into focus. Broadly, cybersecurity addresses the absence of unreasonable risk of compromise of online properties and assets. Confidentiality, integrity, availability, being especially important. In transport systems, the impact of security on safety is often the primary consideration, but other potential losses should also be of concern (e.g., financial…

  • The Whole System: Freight - A Better Way to Carry the Nation’s Baggage

    The Whole System: Freight - A Better Way to Carry the Nation’s Baggage

    Freight is already heavily reliant on Systems Engineering. What more can SE do in this sector? What is freight? Freight refers to the transportation of raw materials, fuel (non-pipeline) and merchandise. It is intermodal, utilising road, rail, air and/or sea to deliver goods from point A (often the point of manufacture of an item) to point B (often the user/consumer) and contains multiple intersections with other transport operators. It is not typical for freight to use dedicated and isolated corridors. Instead, freight routes converge with other freight traffic as well as non-freight transportation. From a Systems Engineering (SE) perspective, moving freight has many similarities with inter-urban passenger rail. Freight networks connect interchange points (or stations). Freight SE is inherently…

  • The Whole System: Rail - Key points on Systems Engineering and Rail

    The Whole System: Rail - Key points on Systems Engineering and Rail

    Rail transport is already a complex system, pivotal to integrating our transport network into a larger system engineering whole What is rail transport? Urban and inter-urban rail is a high-speed solution for the transport of people and goods. While roads are mainly focused on individual transport solutions, rail is mass transit with similarities to air and sea transportation; it is organised as a network, centred on major hubs. The rail network connects interchange points (for example, passenger stations or freight terminals) and other transport modes. Rail Systems Engineering (SE) is inherently a “system of systems.” Why does rail matter? Railways connect goods and people through mass transit operational models. In the year to March 2022, UK railways accommodated 990 million passenger…

  • The Whole System: Aerospace - The magic of flight

    The Whole System: Aerospace - The magic of flight

    It could be said Systems Engineering and Aviation were made for each other The invention of heavier-than-air flight has made the world smaller, easier to reach, particularly after 1950. As aircraft capability has grown, the machines themselves have become, as we shall see, vastly more complex. The aerospace sector manufactures products that can be used in a variety of different contexts: Civil aerospace sector using aircraft and helicopters to transport passengers and goods Defence Aerospace sector extending from Civil Aerospace use case to include military applications (weapons and defence uses) Commercial Aerospace where aircraft and helicopters act as couriers In addition to these products, multiple related infrastructures, subsystems, and personnel provide key support for…

  • The Whole System: Maritime Transport - Dangerous cargoes – Systems Engineering can make it safer

    The Whole System: Maritime Transport - Dangerous cargoes – Systems Engineering can make it safer

    Systems Engineering can make for safer seas Marine transportation has always been a popular choice when moving hazardous goods around the world. Carrying very large inventories in a controlled setting, with access to centralised on-loading and off-loading facilities, connected to geographically distant locations - all present advantages rail and road are unable to achieve. This brings numerous challenges in, for example, managing interfaces with other transportation methods, for example, road, pipelines, and rail. Safety doesn’t come last Waste similar to this is transported by sea for disposal in third countries. Domestic appliances being recycled, SW London Source: John Cameron on Unsplash Implementing a safe, secure, and efficient transportation system network is key to achieving…

  • The Whole System: Maritime Transport - Finding the harbour in the tempest

    The Whole System: Maritime Transport - Finding the harbour in the tempest

    Ship navigation and Systems Engineering can be an excellent fit Backbone of the world economy Maritime transport has supported world commerce for centuries. Now it is the backbone of world trade, making up around 80% of the volume of international trade in goods. Key to this is ship navigation, the process of ensuring a ship gets to where it is going without becoming another statistic in a featureless ocean. In the last decade, global shipping, and the movement of goods by sea have seen substantial changes in the number of ships and their size. The average capacity of container ships has grown from less than 3,000 to circa 4,500 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) in the last decade. More than fifty mega-ships in the world have a capacity of 21,000 TEUs. Navigation is a journey, not a…

  • The Whole System - Road Transport: What we think about when we think about transport

    The Whole System - Road Transport: What we think about when we think about transport

    As important as transport is to people, it is also vital to freight and manufacturers Freight is a good place to begin any discussion of the significance of Systems Engineering within the transport industry. It is something the general public give little or no thought to, unless goods are delayed en route and items such as food, drugs and parcel deliveries are not delivered on time. It (freight) refers to the movement of raw materials, fuel (non-pipeline) and merchandise. It is typically intermodal, including as it does multiple interfaces with other transport operators. Efficient freight transportation is essential for productive manufacturing & distribution and contributes to sustainability through integration with green energy sources. Ticapampa District, Peru Source: Ernesto…

  • The Whole System - Road Transport: An Integrated System Awaits Us, If We Knew It

    The Whole System - Road Transport: An Integrated System Awaits Us, If We Knew It

    What is blocking an integrated road transport system? On the face of it, Transport would appear to be an excellent example of a large-scale engineering system, rather than a collection of disparate technologies that move people and goods from A to B. The plain fact is that this is not true, not entirely. For while cars run on roads, there is little actual integration to make it a true system (other than through the driver). To begin with, Systems Engineering (SE) principles are not applied to this wider road transport system of systems, which includes the vehicles, road infrastructure and communications networks to connect them in the future. Indeed, there is no one single organisation or authority that has this system and data integration as a core goal. It is difficult to see how the…

  • The Whole System: Systems Engineering in Transport - Introduction

    The Whole System: Systems Engineering in Transport - Introduction

    How can Systems Engineering help foster an improved transport system in the UK? This blog series will examine how transport systems use Systems Engineering and how Systems Engineering will be essential for their future success. ‘The Whole System’ is a series (or a system, if you will) of blog posts covering Systems Engineering (SE) in transport. It will provide a snapshot of how SE works within the wide range of transport modes we now take for granted. Systems Engineering defined These definitions provided by the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) are a good guide to what the discipline entails: A system is an arrangement of parts or elements that together exhibit behaviour or meaning that the individual constituents do not. An engineered system is a system designed…

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