The purpose of this study is to value the subjective cost of slight and serious motorcyclist accident using the stated preference method which is applied into the willingness to pay (WTP) approach. Willingness to pay is one way to assess the cost and impact of road traffic casualties. The purpose of this study is to investigate a relationship between age, income and number of children of the respondent and their willingness to pay for reducing slight injury as a result of motorcyclist accident. Two binary discrete choice models have been determined to obtain the figure of the subjective cost. All the independent variables on both models have the expected signs and are significant at 5% level. The goodness of fit of the model to the data is expressed by rhoo2 and this too falls within the expected range of 0 -1

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This research study estimates the risk factor involved in alcohol impaired driving and the disregard of helmet legislation from hospital data of 28 public hospitals in Thailand (from year 1999 to 2003) and thereby calculates the economic loss in motorcycle accidents influenced by alcohol consumption. It also unveils the alleged association between the marketing and advertising strategies of the alcohol and motorcycle manufacturers and motorcycle accidents. The outcome of the study estimates the economic loss due to motorcycle accidents involving alcohol to be US$ 1,444 million per year. The study also reveals from a questionnaire survey that the campaigns against drunk and un-helmeted motorcycle riding is failing against lucrative thrill seeking marketing strategies adopted by the alcohol and motorcycle industries to attract the young generation.

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An in-depth crash analysis is a systematic approach to identify the contributing factors and to discover the causes of a crash. The important starting point for this concept is to map-out the series of events which result in a crash. This is an alternative approach which leads to efficiently remedy and prevent future crashes. This paper adopts the in-depth crash analysis concept to indentify the contributing causes of a fatal crash in a case study of Srisab Gate, one of the main entrances of the Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Thailand. Crash information including at scene and related information were collected. Data analysis, evaluation of potential causes, and recommendation of countermeasures of the case study are presented. The research team wishes to spark up the concerned authorities' interest in the in-depth crash analysis and hopes to promote this concept as an effective tool to tackle the road crash problem in Thailand.

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In this study, the roads currently being designed through driving simulator and 3D graphics in virtual reality are reproduced. The study found out the driver's characteristics in regards to the road geometric characteristics based on data collected through the driving simulator. Furthermore, visual angle data through Eye Camera (Face Lab) test have been obtained and are examined closely on its characteristics. Lastly, it is possible to measure image factors that drivers can feel while driving in road designing level. Therefore, this study set up a road safety model based on geometric characteristics' image data collected through the driving simulator. It closely examined factors affecting the safety of drivers according to the changes in road geometric characteristics. The study presented the method to evaluate the safety of road in the designing level.

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The aim of this study is to construct the traffic accidents authentication models for the Local Traffic Accident Authentication Committees (LTAAC) as reference. In present, due to the committee members will change every two or four years and different LTAACs will authenticate the similar case with different results. This study will build a database which includes 5,268 client data, and the collision types include car/car, car/motorcycle, and motorcycle/motorcycle. This study utilizes the artificial neural network method (ANN), and the classification tree method (CT) to construct the models. This study shows that both of authentication models all have over 70 percent accuracy in the accident responsibilities.

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Road traffic accident (RTA) is one of the major social and public health problems in Malaysia. In year 2006 alone, the total road traffic crashes in Malaysia were 341,252 cases whereby 35,425 people sustained injuries due to road traffic accidents. This figure is 0.15% of the total population (26.4 million) in Malaysia. In order to analyze the road traffic injuries, a Malaysian Road Traffic Injury Surveillance System was developed. The system is a database program written in Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6) with MySQL 4.0.21-nt as the database management system (DBMS). It is useful to store RTI data, printing hospitalization report, perform simple cross tabulations and data analysis. The system contributes in adopting the Abbreviated Injury Scale 1990 update 1998 injury codes for describing motor-vehicle injuries.

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This study aims to provide an overview of road crash injuries occurred in Khon Kaen city, Thailand. A three year data set from the health sector is analyzed. There are an average 1.6 injuries per victim. 70% are male. Male-female ratios are increased when severity levels increased. The most frequently effected area is Head/face (33%) followed by Lower-extremity (32%) and Upper-extremity (28%). In every ten injuries, nine of them are motorcyclist. More than 80% of them riding while unhelmeted and one-third are drink riders. Most of the drink riders are riding unhelmeted. This rider group has higher risk of Head/face injuries than others. Among the moderate to serious injuries group of pick-up truck user, two-third of injuries sustained to the passenger. Injuries to head/face is relatively high when compare with those of motorcyclist for the same injuries levels. The seatbelt usage of the pickup truck user are merit more studies.

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This study aims to develop the comprehensive GIS-based traffic accident database system through the integration of hospital-based data, police data and road inventory data. To determine how to integrate the data from three data sources, data taxonomy is utilized. Available data are hierarchically classified based on their share characteristic. Grouping data in this way is useful for understanding, designing, and building integrated data system. Data warehouse, a common data storage approach to integration, is utilized for the data integration. GIS is an enabling technology for the integration as well. The scope of data integration is established by identifying the model of target data (or integrated data) and identifying the disparate data that would be mapped to the target data. During the physical data integration process, data from the three data sources are extracted, transformed, cleaned and finally loaded into an integrated data source, a data mart or data warehouse.

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The goal of this paper is a development of system for appraising and comparing visibility risk factors of railroad grade crossings. Because accidents at crossings are related to diversity of driver behaviors, car approach speed and driver perception-reaction time, main factors of car braking distance evaluation, are assumed to be stochastically distributed. In this base, a concept of visibility risk at railroad grade crossings is established. Algorithm developed for evaluating visibility risk combines and includes these factors. Like this, visibility risk assessment system, based on database of properties of grade crossings and approach roads without accident records, is developed. With this system, improvement methods of the grade crossings with geometric risk factors can be presented.

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The purpose of this research study is to intersect the knowledge of medical science and transportation engineering to discover injury mechanism and employ it to improve road safety. For this, the study uses the injury data of a total of 199,570 motorcycle accident victims collected from 28 Public Hospitals of Thailand for the period of 1999 to 2003. The injury pattern analysis identifies head (39.18%) and lower extremities (28.12%) to be the two most vulnerable body regions. The most frequently sustained severity in a motorcycle accident is AIS 2. It also identifies head injury to be the main cause of death in motorcycle fatality. The study suggests a 6.18% improvement in life saving due to use of helmet. Lastly, the study highlights the importance of an in-depth study on motorcycle lane as well as speed of the vehicles during crash to understand the events and injury phenomenon of the accident.

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Residents sometimes feel general decline in life due to speedy traffic on neighborhood streets and high traffic volume. Traffic calming is a way to reduce traffic speeds and volume into local residential streets and thereby increase safety for all road users. Japan has introduced some traffic calming devices but there is no design guideline as well as documented methodology for the process. The objective of this research is to perform a comparative study of traffic calming design process, which is expected to facilitate for future implementation in Japan. An internet based questionnaire survey of North America and some European countries was conducted to have knowledge of the traffic calming design process and types of devices currently in use. Interview survey was done to Sacramento (California) and Largo (Maryland) USA. From the research it was found that speed hump is most widely used (53%) device having speed reduction effect of about 8mph.

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Speed limit is currently one of the most controversial topics in Japan as the Japanese National Police Agency has planned to revise the speed limit regulation. Traffic accident analysis and questionnaire survey will be included in their 3-year study plan. However, this study focuses only on the questionnaire survey on Hokkaido roads. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the speed limits on Hokkaido roads by applying trade-off analysis. Trade-off questions between accessibility (speed limit) and safety were applied to show the reflection of publicity. The comparison between speed limits from direct questions and trade-off questions were made. In conclusion, the study found that speed limits during summer period are not appropriate while winter speed limits should be raised. In order to enhance road safety in Hokkaido, the study recommends that the stringent speed enforcement and management should be incorporated with the new speed limit.

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This study investigates the use of land use variables in predicting the number of child pedestrian accident casualties taking Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) as a case study. GIS techniques are used to create spatial models, from which generalised linear models (GLM) are developed over all child accidents and KSI (Killed or Seriously Injured) considering the child pedestrian casualty numbers, land use trip attractors and generators as variables. The results show that that secondary retail and high density residential were the main land use types associated with child pedestrian casualties, in such a way that the former was positively associated while the latter had a negative association. It also found that educational sites were also positively associated with child pedestrian casualties, especially for the KSI.

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During congested periods in urban areas, traffic flows are higher and traffic speeds are lower than during uncongested periods. In such conditions there are likely to be more accidents but fewer, or less severe, casualties than in uncongested periods. The study focused on child, adult and elderly pedestrian accidents in relation to the existing spatial patterns of urban land use in the city centre during congested periods from 7.00am to 8.00pm and uncongested periods from 9.00pm to 06.00am. Generalised Linear Models (GLMs) were constructed using the number of pedestrian accidents including these three age groups as response variables with census and land use data as explanatory variables. The analysis shows that retail land use may have the same influence on adult pedestrians during both congested and uncongested periods on weekdays. On average, an increase of retail land use by 1% in urban area will increase adult pedestrians by 30% during weekdays.

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One of the most effective approaches interpreting accident causality is from the chain perspective. However, this approach has been applied only to measuring safety improvement for specific countermeasures. This paper emphasizes that the chain concept, which reflects the generating process of an accident, should be borne in mind when analyzing accidents and preventions. A safety framework of the driving behavior is constructed from the chain perspective in support of this argument. Also, a two-stage approach is proposed to adopt the idea in analyzing accident data. The approach includes applying classification techniques at the first stage and causal inference models at the second stage. The relevant methodologies are introduced and possible issues are discussed. It is believed that the proposed framework and approach would help further studies to analyze and interpret accident data in a more thorough perspective.

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Urban Railroad has been constantly exposed to the risk of accidents because of uncertain system of railroad safety in Korea. The Korea government enacted a law, railroad safety Act, for each railroad operating company to make the Standard Operation Procedures (SOP) to reduce the magnitude of fatality and injury in the case of emergency, including responsibility and obligation. This study, in the beginning, has established emergency response scenarios to build the effective SOP through the analysis of railroad accident's distinguishable remarks. Then, emergency response procedures are developed based on the emergency response scenario. Activity-action diagrams are suggested to make a consecutive procedure for the emergency response. Each activity consists of a bundle of actions by emergency response personnel. Finally, a case study has been performed for a fire accident in tunnel of urban rail transit.

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This study investigates the road geometry factors and the seasonal factors associated with head-on collisions and single vehicle collisions occurred in Hokkaido, Japan. Head-on collisions represent about 20% of all traffic collisions on the rural two lane national roads however; head-on collisions were responsible for about 40% of the fatal collisions. We developed a segmented accident database based on Traffic Accident Analysis System (TAAS) produced by Civil Engineering Research Institute for Cold Region Hokkaido. Analysis using Poisson-regression models showed that road geometry factors and seasonal factors were important factors correlated with head-on collisions. The model proposed in this study is potentially capable of identifying the causal factors of head-on and single vehicle collisions. In addition, the model might be used as the safety evaluation function in the development of the before-after study.

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Transportation systems are indispensable for all the countries around the world. The main concerns of transportation systems are safety, efficiency and reliability. To fulfill those concerns, it is necessary to integrate into one overarching transportation information system. Integrated Transportation System (ITS) was proposed as a future transportation information system and proposed the three layers object model (3LOM) as an architecture of ITS. In 3LOM, the middle layer consists of a data management system. In order to implement the data management system of the middle layer, it is crucial to design an integrated database structure. This paper proposes a four-layer database model of ITS and discusses how to integrate different types of transportation system. The four-layer model includes a general map database, a general transportation system database, a schedule based and non-schedule based transportation system database, and a specific transportation system database.

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In Japan, fatalities from traffic accidents are decreasing, but sacrifices of the traffic accidents are not negligible. So, traffic safety measures are still important. When considering the traffic safety measures, it is effective to extract dangerous locations with high fatality and injury accident rates and then analyze the details of the factors involved in such accidents. Due to numerous factors, however, it is difficult to effectively and efficiently process large quantities of traffic accident data. For this reason, previous traffic analyses are reviewed, and a Support Vector Machine (hereinafter referred to as "SVM"), which has become the focus of attention as a data mining method, is chosen. The SVM is applied to the traffic accident data analysis. The effectiveness of and problems surrounding a SVM are examined in this study. The classification rate of the SVM toward non-learning data was approximately 70%.

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The future development of the harbor is influenced by many factors, namely port operational efficiency, port safety, weather condition, national, economic growth rate, and political stability. Although operational efficiency is important; however safety is even more important than operational efficiency. From this point of view, Kaohsiung harbor will soon launch its vessel traffic management system. Piloting service is one of the crucial elements in the development of a port VTS. This article analyzes pilots service behaviour in the Kaohsiung harbor and proposes appropriate pilots management regulations in the future VTS mechanism.

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An automated tire mark identification system includes functions of the mark localization, segmentation, feature extraction, tire-tread matching and identification. The tire mark localization is the first and most important step for the system development. The study proposed a new algorithm called rotation-projection method to solve the problem of the seed selection by using region growing algorithm for skid mark localization and expand the processing scope of the types of tire marks. This new algorithm has six steps including gradient direction angle detection, image rotation, image projection, calculating the coefficient of the variant, and detecting the tire mark area. This method combined with the gradient operator can effectively detect the area of the new or old tire marks. Its accuracy is similar to the original region growing algorithm in new tire mark localization. Nevertheless, the algorithm also can localize the old tire mark while the region growing method can not cope with.

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The purpose of this paper is to develop traffic accident detection algorithm for improving performance of the automatic traffic accident system that are operated in Korea from 2004. The current automatic traffic accident recorder has problems of detection rates and correct detection rate decrease according to sensitivities by environmental influences and the time elapsed. In order to solve these problems, we developed the improved algorithms by utilizing of the object recognition, learning intelligence system and fluid approximation algorithm. The field test result for 2 weeks amounts to 28 movie file detection and the total number of traffic accident was 6 in actual detection areas during evaluation period. We conclude that the traffic detection rate (DR) is 100%, correct detection rate (CDR) is 21.4% and this means the performance of current traffic accident detection system (DR : 66.7%, CDR : 2.03%) is improved.

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: In this study we surveyed the speed difference between road sections and tunnel sections on the highways under the given conditions, selected the variables which are expected to cause the speed difference, verified the significance of the data via statistical analysis, and examined the cause of speed difference between road sections and tunnel sections on the highways. We selected 20 tunnels for analysis, and collected the vehicle speed data from FTMS and ITMS. Based on this data, we selected 9 variables which were considered to cause the speed difference; Lateral clearance, Height, Portal shape, etc.. We further deduced the factors of speed difference between the road sections and the tunnel sections on the highways via principal component analysis between the 9 variables and regression analysis.

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This paper presents the results of Thailand study of traffic accident costing. Five provinces are selected as representatives for north-eastern, northern, middle, southern region and the capital city. They are Khon Kaen, Lampang, Nakhonsawan, Songkhla, and Bangkok. The Human Capital Method ( HCM) is adopted for the 2004 study in which 13,766 people were killed. The cost components are grouped into three categories thus: human category comprising loss of productivity, medical treatment, long term care, quality of life and emergency service; property damage category comprising vehicle and non-vehicle damages; and general traffic accident category comprising insurance, police administration, judicial, emergency rescue services and travel delay. Further, all estimated costs are computed for four levels of casualty and accident severities. The total costs of traffic accident in Thailand for the year 2004 are estimated at 153,755 million baht (approximately US$ 3,460 million).

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Nearly sixty percent of the world's population lives in low and middle income countries (LMIC) and these countries include 62 of the largest 100 cities in the world.The urban growth rates in Asia, Africa and Latin America are higher than thosein Europe and North America and so are the vehicle growth rates (Worl Health Organization, 1998). Data were collected for road traffic fatality rates for 56 cities to understand the relationship between per capita income and road safety. The results show that pedestrian risk in lw and middle income countries is generally much higher than high income countries. If risk for pedestrians is high it will discourage use of public transport as each trip involves two pedestrian trips. This in turn will make it difficult to have cleaner air. Therefore, pedestrian safety becomes a pre condition for planning sustainable transport systems.

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Kochi prefecture advocates ITS for local pedestrians, which is developed at low costs taking into account full deployment of the system. Kochi prefecture developed pedestrian information system in the intermediate and mountainous area, designed to ensure a safe traveling environment by reminding drivers that a pedestrian is around. As part of safety measures, our team deployed the system on the road in the intermediate and mountainous area within the prefecture where a sidewalk is not available since depopulation is accelerating merger and closure of elementary school and junior high school.

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The identification of accident black spots in the road network is a transboundary task around the world. Different appropriate methods are used in European and Asian countries. The paper gives a descriptive overview and makes a comparison of methods used in Thailand, Hungary and Germany. It shows similarities and differences of the used methods. On this basis the reader of the paper can share experiences made by experts in the three countries. The paper is prepared in the framework of the EU-Asia project "NICE on RoadS - Network In Competence Enhancement on Road Safety" with financial support from the European Union.

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This research presents the philosophy and development of IOSA model in current airline industry. It starts with the introduction of safety challenge in the aviation industry, followed by the discussion of human error and organizational accidents, indicating that accident's contribting factors has been affected by "organizational and management factors". In an attempt to effectively deal with the organizational issues, IOSA program is designed to provide a common airline audit standard, which help the airline not only to deliver operational safety but also to operate more efficiently. After exploring how IOSA model can actually reduce airlne cost and share audit can increase its credit as well as business opportunity, conclusions will be made that the IOSA model can also be applied in different fields like airport operations, cargo operations as well as other transportation mode to achieve continous safety improvement and cost efficiency.

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We have scientifically identified road sections which have the most frequent accidents by compiling data on traffic accident occurrence in each road section. Countermeasures are being focused on very worst sections, which we call the "red zone." The red zone consists of only about 7% of the total number of road sections under our management, but about 65% of the budget for measures to prevent traffic accidents will be devoted to the improvement of these sections. We anticipate that this kind of rational management, in which problematic locations are scientifically identified and made a budget priority, will lead to more effective use of invested funds for the reduction of traffic accidents.

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A model for locating new airports is built aiming to minimize the total expenses of regional air transport. Two factors in the model namely airport choice probability and airlines average rate are analyzed in detail. For the former, a sub-model to simulate the users' behavior for choosing airports is built, and for the later a sub-model to analyze the market scale of regional air transport is developed based on the model calculating the market scale of single airline. The study integrates the airline average rate setting, airport choice behavior and new airport location closely and considers the benefits of both passengers and the new airports simultaneously. Due to the interaction, an iterative calculation algorithm is designed to solve the model, in which a GAs is used to simulate the relationship between the two factors and the equilibrium solution is obtained. Finally, a numerical test is done to validate the method.

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This paper discusses the scheduling problem for loading outbound containers in container terminals. The problem is to determine a schedule that minimizes the makespan or time being taken to load a given set of outbound containers. An integrated model based on hybrid flow shop scheduling problem is developed. Two Metaheuristic algorithms are designed to solve the proposed model, the procedures are: initializing container sequence first; then allocating containers according to certain partitioning rule; and then improving the sequence by simulated annealing. Numerical experiments are conducted to test the performance of the proposed model and algorithms.

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Recent trends in containerized trade have led to the importance of measuring the performance of container ports. In Malaysia, container ports are mostly situated along the Straits of Malacca, one of the most important shipping lanes in the world. Two of its ports, Port Klang and Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) are ranked amongst the top 20 container ports in the world. In particular, PTP is ranked 16th in 2004, even though it is just a young port which started its operations in October 1999. This paper aims to quantitatively measure the productivity of Malaysian container ports. A cross-sectional performance measurement is carried out, using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. To further assess the productivity of the ports over time, a set of panel data is analyzed. In order to compare the productivity of the Malaysian ports with world standards, Port of Singapore is added as a reference.

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The terminal area has become the bottleneck of air traffic, so its stability plays a vital role in the steady operation of air traffic flow management system. In this paper, the following theory and stability theory on road traffic are used for reference to build the traffic following model of terminal area. Stability analysis and parametric analysis are then applied to the terminal area traffic management system. Finally, two terminal area traffic management system stability indices are presented.

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As an air cargo terminal is the key point in the airfreight market, its business development is directly correlated with the volume of the goods that are transported by air. The large airfreight market also stimulates a beneficial operation niche for air cargo terminals. This paper will focus on studying 3 major air cargo terminal firms through Grey Relation Analysis (GRA) and two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in order to measure each company's relative strength. A total of 31 initial indicators were considered, with nine being selected: two indicators of production efficiency, three indicators of marketing effectiveness, and four indicators of execution efficiency. In performance evaluation parts, Taiwan Air Cargo Terminal (TACT) is found to be relatively efficient in both efficiency and effectiveness stage in 2000 and 2001. Everterminal (ET) and Far Glory Free Trade Zone (FTZ) are found to be efficient in effectiveness stage only during 2001-2002. In other years they were inefficient.

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This paper gives a basically theoretically analytical model of the ultimate capacity of two parallel runways. The capacity model is about two operation modes of runways, one is absolutely independent operation mode, and another is dependent approach and independent departure mode. Apply the capacity mode to estimating the ultimate capacity of Shanghai Pudong International Airport two runways system. Also compare the runways capacity curve of two operation mode. The result of this analysis shows that the capacity model works effectively with the degree of accuracy in the assessment of airport runway capacity.

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In practice, liner shipping company pursues to fully load cargo on vessel. It has brought about argument for slot allocation between shipping agencies in booming market and ignored the revenue management to maximize profit for liner shipping company. Especially in Asia service, the service route is designed to call more ports, it is an important issue to make a slot allocation which determined the slot to different port-pairs to increase profit and provide shipping agencies a rule to follow. This paper presents an optimal slot allocation in intra Asia service for liner shipping. The slot allocation model is formulated through mathematical programming to maximize operational profit (freight revenue minus variable cost) with the consideration of revenue management. We illustrate this slot allocation model with a case study of Taiwan liner shipping company and the results show the applicability and better performances than the previous allocation used in practice.

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This study employs data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to evaluate the performance of domestic air routes. A total of 15 routes operated by a Taiwanese domestic airline are examined from the perspectives of cost efficiency, cost effectiveness and service effectiveness. Three input variables, two production variables and two service variables are selected from the regression analysis. The routes evaluated as relative efficiency are presented and the improvements for all inefficient routes are thereupon proposed. This study also performs agglomerative hierarchical clustering analysis to categorize the routes into four clusters according to their efficiency and effectiveness scores of three perspectives. Moreover, four routes featured in each cluster are respectively selected to have further evaluation of the routes' monthly performance.

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This paper aims to recommend a promising alternative approach for evaluating the operation efficiency of the top 20 international container ports in Asia for the year 2004. Evaluation of efficiency for the target DMU (Decision Making Unit) with conventional DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) is to determine the most beneficial multipliers of input and output and derive the best efficiency that the target DMU can achieve with these multipliers. However, the available studies have not yet provided a satisfactory answer to the problem of making international comparisons of port efficiency. For performance enhancement, TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) can be employed to aggregate efficiencies in different aspects, which leads to an innovative two-stage relative efficiency estimation technique, called DEA/TOPSIS. Superior to the traditional DEA approach, determination of the overall ranks of the container ports with better precision is accessible based on the DEA/TOPSIS approach.

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This study empirically evaluates the crucial dimensions of safety climate and vessel accidents from a seafarer's perspective, specifically in the container shipping. According to the factor analysis six safety climate dimensions are identified. A logistic regression was used to evaluate the effects of safety climate dimensions on vessel accidents such as crew fatalities and machinery failures. The findings of this study indicate that the safety management, safety training and job safety dimensions significantly affecting crew fatalities, whereas job safety dimension has a significant effect on machinery failure. The results suggest that job safety dimension is the most important factor affecting vessel accidents, followed by safety management and safety training dimensions. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings on the vessel accident prevention in container shipping are discussed.

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This study applies the DEA (Data Envelope Analysis) methodology and Malmquist production index to analyze efficiency and productivity change of C.K.S. air cargo termination before and after privatization. Empirical results indicate privatization improves efficiency of terminals and that the productivity change relies on technology innovation. It is worth mentioning that terminal privatization experienced initial decline followed by latter increase trend. The reason could be the economic declines and terrorist attacks in 2002 caused decline in efficiency and stabilized in 2004. In addition, privatization on organization management and technology transfer requiring transition time to show effects could also be possible reason.

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This paper empirically evaluates web site services from container shipping companies' perspective. The results suggest that carriers perceive vessel schedules and tracking to be the most important web site service attribute, followed by customs response, service routes, and electronic document service. Furthermore, a cluster analysis were employed to classify carriers into three groups, namely, schedule and tracking services oriented firms, support services oriented firms, and market and company information services oriented firms. Theoretical and practical implications of the research findings are discussed.

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The objective of this research is to investigate the main factors underlining air travelers' choice behavior in Tokyo Metropolitan area's multiple-airport system and apply these finding as the backup information for futher policy implementations in order that both existing airport are effectively utilized. Stated preference experiments were conducted using internet-based survey. Experimentally controlled combinations included three attributes: airfare; access time; and flight frequency. Respondents were asked to choose their most preferable air tickets as they make their decisions between two airports. We conducted a cluster analysis to segment the respondents by their attitudes and estimated a discrete choice model for the respondents representing the population living in the Tokyo Metropolitan region. The results indicate that: (a)airfare and access time are significant factors, especially in domestic experiments; and (b) frequency of service is less significant factor.

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This paper presents how airline passenger service requirements can be analyzed by using Kano's model of quality element classification as well as discusses the potential benefits that can be achieved by applying this approach to make marketing strategy planning. According to Kano's model, quality elements can be classified into three categories, namely Must-be, One-dimensional and Attractive needs, depending on their ability to create customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Results of this study suggest that airline passenger service elements could be classified analogously with Kano's model to identify the most important passenger service elements, and to effectively distinguish the differences between passenger groups by statistic analysis.

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In the highly competitive shipping industry, flagging out has become one of the important operation strategies for shipowners. Although some literatures have discussed the practice of and reasons for vessel flagging out, there is a lack of systematic and quantified analysis, nor any differentiation between different shipping sub-markets. In order to understand the degree of influence of the related factors upon the vessel registration of Taiwan container shipping companies, this study adopts the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and develops a hierarchical analysis framework with four different objectives, and thirteen relevant criteria to evaluate the issue. Study results indicated that "Reducing operating costs" is the most important among the four objectives, and "Restriction of the operation region" is the most important evaluation criterion. It is expected that the findings of this work is helpful for shipping companies and government agencies in making relevant decisions.

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This study investigates the effects of noise emitted by operating aircrafts using runway 06/24 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on communities namely Barangay San Dionisio and Barangay Rizal, which lie under the flight paths of the aircrafts. Noise contours in the vicinity of the airport were generated using Integrated Noise Model along with data on aircraft operations such as frequency of flights of different types of aircrafts, flight paths and weather conditions at NAIA. It also presents the perceptions of respondents from the two communities mentioned on how they are affected by aircraft noise. These were analyzed along with other factors that might influence an individual's perception such as years of residence, occupation, sex, age and household income. Analysis showed that individuals experienced the effects of noise in varying degrees but there is a general tendency to foreground their view that they have 'gotten used' to aircraft noise.

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Today's international container shipping is a highly competitive industry operated under dynamic changing environment. It is important for shipping companies to continually improve their performance in order to maintain their current and future competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the top-3 container shipping companies in Taiwan by using financial ratio and intellectual capital, based on the data collected during year 2003-2005. Grey relation analysis is used to select the representative indicators and then TOPSIS is used to rank the performance. Suggestions to enhance performance of each company are then proposed following the results of analysis.

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Does mega carrier utilize mega port as the hub. To answer the above question, this study collected three items of operational information of thirty-four ports of one mega carrier, to examine the role of container ports played in the shipping network.

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The method of evaluating a container terminal performance, from a management perspective, is becoming more and more complicated. This paper intends to evaluate the performance of container terminal from a micro perspective. The queuing theory could only solve problems about changes of berth numbers in the operational performance of container terminals and seldom simultaneously deal with equipment variation. In this study, we have used many evaluation indexes, including cost functions, to analysis four different operation scenarios via a simulation model. According to our research results the equipment deployment is discussed to propose an operational method in order to promote port performance. The equipment deployment of a container terminal plays a vital role in port planning and profoundly influences ship berthing and the smooth operation of container loading/discharging. Performances of three different berth configurations are also compared, and the reasonable capacity of container terminal is also deduced.

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This study attempts to optimize the sizes and locations of the airport parking facilities by considering demand-supply interaction and traveler socioeconomic characteristics. This study formulates traveler parking and operator supply costs functions. This study develops a mathematical programming model to determine the optimum sizes and locations of the airport remote and terminal parking facilities. Results imply that when the airport locates in a region with higher average income residences, the remote parking facility should locate at a closer distance with higher parking fee while the terminal parking supplies a considerable amount of stalls. As the land acquiring cost is less related to terminal access distance, a closer remote parking facility will not result in a higher operating cost. Remote parkers will benefit from both a relatively low parking fee and a short access time, thereby resulting in an increased demand.

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The Penghu Islands are part of Taiwan's territory with varied international fishery cargo boat seafarers including Chinese seafarers. Empirical surveys on Chinese fishery seafarers and local fish cargo boats' owners are implemented and an Importance-Performance Grid model is employed to explore both parties' perceptions differences on the importance and performance of fourteen job satisfaction attributes for these Chinese seafarers. Looking into the 'possible overkill attribute', Chinese seafarers consider 'Ease of Hiring Chinese seafarers procedure in Taiwan' as less important attributes with higher degree of performance. In contrast with the Chinese seafarers, local ship owners perceive 'Coast Guard Agency's (CGA's) Reschedule roster time', 'Job Security', and 'Discrimination between Chinese and foreign fishermen' as the three 'possible overkill attributes'. Thus it could be concluded, when 'critical attribute' and 'possible overkill attribute' influencing seafarers' job satisfaction are concerned, there are broad perception gaps between Penghu's fish cargo boat owners and the Chinese seafarers.

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