A Dynamic and Deadline-Oriented Road Pricing Mechanism for Urban Traffic Management

Road pricing is an urban traffic management mechanism to reduce traffic congestion.Currently,most of the road pricing systems based on predefined charging tolls fail to consider the dynamics of urban traffic flows and travelers’demands on the arrival time.In this paper,we propose a method to dynamically adjust online road toll based on traffic conditions and travelers’demands to resolve the above-mentioned problems.The method,based on deep reinforcement learning,automatically allocates the optimal toll for each road during peak hours and guides vehicles to roads with lower toll charges.Moreover,it further considers travelers’demands to ensure that more vehicles arrive at their destinations before their estimated arrival time.Our method can increase the traffic volume effectively,as compared to the existing static mechanisms.

Distributed Storage System for Electric Power Data Based on HBase

Managing massive electric power data is a typical big data application because electric power systems generate millions or billions of status,debugging,and error records every single day.To guarantee the safety and sustainability of electric power systems,massive electric power data need to be processed and analyzed quickly to make real-time decisions.Traditional solutions typically use relational databases to manage electric power data.However,relational databases cannot efficiently process and analyze massive electric power data when the data size increases significantly.In this paper,we show how electric power data can be managed by using HBase,a distributed database maintained by Apache.Our system consists of clients,HBase database,status monitors,data migration modules,and data fragmentation modules.We evaluate the performance of our system through a series of experiments.We also show how HBase’s parameters can be tuned to improve the efficiency of our system.

Thermodynamic assessment of hydrogen production via solar thermochemical cycle based on MoO2/Mo by methane reduction

Inspired by the promising hydrogen production in the solar thermochemical(STC)cycle based on non-stoichiometric oxides and the operation temperature decreasing effect of methane reduction,a high-fuel-selectivity and CH4-introduced solar thermochemical cycle based on MoO2/Mo is studied.By performing HSC simulations,the energy upgradation and energy conversion potential under isothermal and non-isothermal operating conditions are compared.In the reduction step,MoO2:CH4=2 and 1020 K<Tred<1600 K are found to be most favorable for syngas selectivity and methane conversion.Compared to the STC cycle without CH4,the introduction of methane yields a much higher hydrogen production,especially at the lower temperature range and atmospheric pressure.In the oxidation step,a moderately excessive water is beneficial for energy conversion whether in isothermal or non-isothermal operations,especially at H2O:Mo=4.In the whole STC cycle,the maximum non-isothermal and isothermal efficiency can reach 0.417 and 0.391 respectively.In addition,the predicted efficiency of the second cycle is also as high as 0.454 at Tred=1200 K and Toxi=400 K,indicating that MoO2 could be a new and potential candidate for obtaining solar fuel by methane reduction.