A Multi-Mode Public Transportation System Using Vehicular to Network Architecture

The number of accidents in the campus of Suranaree University of Technology (SUT) has increased due to increasing number of personal vehicles. In this paper, we focus on the development of public transportation system using Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) along with the limitation of personal vehicles using sharing economy model. The SUT Smart Transit is utilized as a major public transportation system, while MoreSai@SUT (electric motorcycle services) is a minor public transportation system in this work. They are called Multi-Mode Transportation system as a combination. Moreover, a Vehicle to Network (V2N) is used for developing the Multi-Mode Transportation system in the campus. Due to equipping vehicles with On Board Unit (OBU) and 4G LTE modules, the real time speed and locations are transmitted to the cloud. The data is then applied in the proposed mathematical model for the estimation of Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA). In terms of vehicle classifications and counts, we deployed CCTV cameras, and the recorded videos are analyzed by using You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithm. The simulation and measurement results of SUT Smart Transit and MoreSai@SUT before the covid-19 pandemic are discussed. Contrary to the existing researches, the proposed system is implemented in the real environment. The final results unveil the attractiveness and satisfaction of users. Also, due to the proposed system, the CO2 gas gets reduced when Multi-Mode Transportation is implemented practically in the campus.

Automated Triage System for Intensive Care Admissions during the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Hybrid XGBoost-AHP Approach.

The sudden increase in patients with severe COVID-19 has obliged doctors to make admissions to intensive care units (ICUs) in health care practices where capacity is exceeded by the demand. To help with difficult triage decisions, we proposed an integration system Xtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifier and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assist health authorities in identifying patients' priorities to be admitted into ICUs according to the findings of the biological laboratory investigation for patients with COVID-19. The Xtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifier was used to decide whether or not they should admit patients into ICUs, before applying them to an AHP for admissions' priority ranking for ICUs. The 38 commonly used clinical variables were considered and their contributions were determined by the Shapley's Additive explanations (SHAP) approach. In this research, five types of classifier algorithms were compared: Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Tree (DT), K-Nearest Neighborhood (KNN), Random Forest (RF), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), to evaluate the XGBoost performance, while the AHP system compared its results with a committee formed from experienced clinicians. The proposed (XGBoost) classifier achieved a high prediction accuracy as it could discriminate between patients with COVID-19 who need ICU admission and those who do not with accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity rates of 97%, 96%, and 96% respectively, while the AHP system results were close to experienced clinicians' decisions for determining the priority of patients that need to be admitted to the ICU. Eventually, medical sectors can use the suggested framework to classify patients with COVID-19 who require ICU admission and prioritize them based on integrated AHP methodologies.

Performance Evaluation of UAV-Enabled LoRa Networks for Disaster Management Applications.

In hostile and remote environments, such as mountains, forests or suburban areas, traditional communications may not be available, especially after a disaster, such as a flood, a forest fire or an earthquake. In these situations, the wireless networks may become congested or completely disrupted and may not be adequate to support the traffic generated by rescuers. It is also considered as the key tool in Corona Virus (COVID-19) battle. Moreover, the conventional approaches with fixed gateways may not work either, and this might lead to decoding errors due to the large distance between mobile nodes and the gateway. To avoid the decoding errors and improve the reliability of the messages, we propose to use intermediate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to transfer messages from ground-based Long Range (LoRa) nodes to the remote base station (BS). Specifically, this UAV-enabled LoRa architecture is based on the ad hoc WiFi network, wherein, UAVs act as relays for the traffic generated between LoRa nodes and BS. To make the architecture more efficient, a distributed topology control algorithm is also proposed for UAVs. The algorithm is based on virtual spring forces and movement prediction technique that periodically updates the UAV topology to adapt to the movement of the ground-based LoRa nodes that move on the surface. The simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed approach for packet reception rate and average delay quality of service (QoS) metrics. It is observed that the mechanisms implemented in a UAV-enabled LoRa network effectively help to improve the packet reception rate with nominal buffer delays.