ESR13: Using truck sensors for road pavement performance investigation

Hi crew, I hope you are doing well. Today I want to share with you my experience at the IEEE Big Data conference 2017 in Boston. This is huge event organised by the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ( IEEE ) that is one of the world largest organization for professional engineers. I attended the conference to present my paper at the workshop about applications of ‘Big Data’ technologies in the transport industry. The paper is about “Application of machine learning to fuel consumption modelling of trucks” and you can find more information about it, including an abstract and a copy of the paper before acceptance, on my Research Gate . The workshop was last week on Monday afternoon (that is in the night in Europe as there are 5 hour difference between Boston and the UK) and brought together data scientists and engineers working on applications of Big Data and machine learning in the transport industry all over the world. This include, for example, the manag...

Hey crew! Are you ready for a new post?! Here we go then! Today I’m going to introduce you to a more technical topic. In fact, we are going to talk about machine learning and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in particular. Machine learning is a subfield of computer science which aims to give computers the ability to do something without being explicitly programmed for doing that. Originally, it comes from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence. Exploring the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from experience (historical data), the algorithm operates by building a model from example inputs in order to make data-driven predictions or decisions. ANN is just a branch of Machine Learning. They are data processing paradigms inspired by the way the biological nervous system process information in human beings (Biological Neural Networks, BNNs). Usually they are used to estimate or approximate functions t...

Hello everybody! I hope you spent nice holidays and you came back to work cheerful and full of energy! Today, as promised, I’m going to explain a bit more about the data we collect and about the type of analysis we intend to perform. As I previously explained , the objective of the project is: to assess the relationship between truck fleet fuel consumption and road pavement conditions. Data about the fuel usage are collected by Microlise Ltd whilst data about road pavement conditions are collected by TRL Ltd (but owned by Highways England ). In both cases, data are stored in very big databases which can be remotely queried whenever needed. This study is going to consider only data about trucks travelling along the English SRN (Strategic Road Network). The SRN is completely managed by the Highways England authority. It is around 7’000 kilometers long and is mostly made of motorways and ‘A’ roads. Although the SRN network represents just 2% of the length of all roa...

Hello crew, how is it going? “R” you ready for a new post? Today I’ll introduce the software that I’m using for the data analysis in my project. The name of the software is “ R ”. Have you ever heard about it? Yes, when I arrived in NTEC I knew it just because my brother uses to work with it. My brother is a mathematician (strange people, but I love my brother anyway). By the way, I knew how to handle computer programming languages such as MATLAB® , C++, Python and Microsoft® Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)so, for this reason, it was not a problem to learn a new one. Futhermore, R is quite easy to learn and its syntax is very similar to Python. Yes, it can be confusing  at times because it is possible to write certain commands in another language instead of the one that you are using, but basically once you know how to handle one of them, you know (almost) all. Just change the syntax of the command or the keyword which recall a specific function that you need. ...

Hey crew! How are you doing? Are you ready for a new post? Today I will explain you why my project is so important for Europe as well as for the rest of the world. I’ll be honest with you: this time the post will be a bit more boring than usual. So, get yourself a pillow before you start reading. “Forewarned is forearmed.” cit. I will start this post with some questions for you. I hope they will allow you a better understanding of the issues that I’ll be dealing with. Have you ever remained stuck in a traffic jam? For example: while you are coming back from school or from work, or maybe when you were going to watch a football match at the stadium. Probably, you were just cursing the closest driver or all the cars around you because maybe you were missing your train or you were going to arrive late to the meeting you had with your boss. Have you ever cursed the local administration while driving on a rough road? Probably you’re so used to drive in such terr...