IT in transport

IT in transport

IT is the area of managing technology and spans wide variety of areas that include but are not limited to things such as processes, computer software e.t.c

Transport or transportation is the movement of people and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include: air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles and operations. Transport is important since it enables trade between people which in turn establishes civilization.

In information technology the modes of transport have been improved in terms of speed to increase efficiency in transportation. This is by invention of air transport, road transport, among others.

Air Transport.

A fixed air wing air craft commonly called air plane is a heavier than air-craft where movement of air in relation to the wings is used to generate lift. The air craft is the second fastest method of transport after the rocket. Aviation is able to quickly transport people and limited amount of cargo over long distances, but incur high costs and energy use: for short distances or in inaccessible places.

Rail transport.

Rail transport is where a train run along a st of two parallel steel rails known as railway or rail road. The rails are anchored perpendicular to ties of timber, concrete, or compressed earth and gravel in a bed of ballast. A train consists of or more connect vehicles that run on the rails. Locomotion is enabled by steam or diesel but has lately been improved by the technology to as far as electrically enabled locomotion. Also, a train can be powered by cables, gravity, pneumatic and gas turbines. The modern high speed rail is capable of speeds up to 350 Km/h, but this requires specially built track.

Road transport

Roads are typically smoothened paved, or otherwise prepared to allow easy travel. The most common road vehicle is the auto mobile; a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor.

As of 2002, there were 590 million auto mobiles worldwide. Auto mobiles offer high flexibility and with low capacity. In road transport there has been usage of fuel in motor vehicles to facilitate movement but of late there has been the invention of the electric vehicles : for example in Makerere University in Uganda.

Water transport

Water transport is the process of transport a water craft, such as sea, ocean, lakecanal or river. The need of buoyancy unites watercraft, and makes the hull a dominant aspect of its construction, maintenance and appearance. In 19^th century the first steam ships were developed using a steam engine to drive a paddle wheel or propeller to move the ship. Then steam was produced using wood or coal. Now most ships have an engine using a slightly refined                                                                                                                                                                    type of petroleum called bunker fuel. Some ship such as submarines, use nuclear power to produce the steam

Other modes of transport:

1. Pipeline transport

2. Cable transport-: a broad mode where vehiclesare pulled by cables instead of an internal power sources

3. Spaceflight-: transport out of earth’s atmosphere into outer space by means of spacecraft.While large amount of research have gone into technology, it is   rarely used except to put satellites into orbit, and conduct scientific experiments.

Applications of IT in transport:

Floating car data/floating cellular

"Floating car" or "probe" data collection is a set of relatively low-cost methods for obtaining travel time and speed data for vehicles traveling along streets, highways, freeways, and other transportation routes.Three methods have been used to obtain the raw data:

ü  Triangulation Method. In developed countries a high proportion of cars contain one or more mobile phones. The phones periodically transmit their presence information to the mobile phone network, even when no voice connection is established. In the mid 2000s, attempts were made to use mobile phones as anonymous traffic probes. As a car moves, so does the signal of any mobile phones that are inside the vehicle. By measuring and analyzing network data using triangulation, pattern matching or cell-sector statistics (in an anonymous format), the data was converted into traffic flow information. With more congestion, there are more cars, more phones, and thus, more probes. In metropolitan areas, the distance between antennas is shorter and in theory accuracy increases. An advantage of this method is that no infrastructure needs to be built along the road; only the mobile phone network is leveraged. But in practice the triangulation method can be complicated, especially in areas where the same mobile phone towers serve two or more parallel routes (such as a freeway with a frontage road, a freeway and a commuter rail line, two or more parallel streets, or a street that is also a bus line). By the early 2010s, the popularity of the triangulation method was declining.

ü  Vehicle Re-Identification. Vehicle re-identification methods require sets of detectors mounted along the road. In this technique, a unique serial number for a device in the vehicle is detected at one location and then detected again (re-identified) further down the road. Travel times and speed are calculated by comparing the time at which a specific device is detected by pairs of sensors. This can be done using the MAC (Machine Access Control) addresses from Bluetooth devices, or using the RFID serial numbers from Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) transponders (also called "toll tags").

ü  GPS Based Methods. An increasing number of vehicles are equipped with in-vehicle GPS (satellite navigation) systems that have two-way communication with a traffic data provider. Position readings from these vehicles are used to compute vehicle speeds.