Book Reviews

An Introduction to Traffic Flow Theory

Elefteriadou, Lily. 2014. An Introduction to Traffic Flow Theory. Springer. 251 pp. $69.99.

Transport engineering is experiencing a revival, in large part thanks to Google and its self-driving car. If and when driving assistants become common, much in the field of transport will change, and huge opportunities will open up to those aware of them. Within traffic-flow theory, perhaps the subfield of transport engineering most ripe for a change, many university courses still rely on Gerlough and Capelle (1964), which provides an excellent introduction to the topic, although more recent books are available; examples of such books include Gazis (2002) and Cascetta (2009). Therefore, Springer’s publication of a textbook on traffic-flow theory aimed at first-year graduate students seems timely.

At 251 pages, this volume is thin, at least compared to tomes, such as the U.S. Highway Capacity Manual (Transportation Research Board 2010), that standardize traffic engineering. Elefteriadou’s book strikes a good balance between explaining the options and outlining the current standards. The popular press, e.g. Buchanan (1964) and Dennis and Urry (2009), explains the rationale to the point of being philosophical, but does not explain what the current standards are. The technical documents, which are the standards, on the other hand, often give little or no rationale as to where a particular model comes from, why that model is used, what its alternatives are, and what the relative pros and cons of using it are.

An Introduction to Traffic Flow Theory starts with a simple model of the mechanics of a single vehicle (pp. 1–30) and gives a nice overview of standard car-following models (pp. 30–60). It explains at length the relationships between flow, speed, and density (pp. 60–90); unfortunately, it does not use realistic data for illustrative purposes. Subsequently, it explains simulations using examples (pp. 137–160), but does not include a survey of the available software. Toward the end of the book, the author devotes much space to the physical aspects of the transport infrastructure (pp. 165–240); however, she leaves a number of fields of research distinctly underrepresented, including the examples listed as follows.

1. Discrete choice models and dynamic traffic assignment (Ben-Akiva and Bierlaire 1999, Ben-Akiva et al. 1999). This material would be appropriate for a volume in Springer’s series on optimization and its applications; in particular, the considerations of information availability and dynamic pricing on the traffic flow, which seem to be of increasing importance, are not addressed.

2. Queuing theory and adaptive traffic control systems, such as SCATS and SCOOT. These systems, which have been considered state of the art in the control of signaled intersections since the 1980s, are relegated to half a page of advanced technologies (p. 215).

3. Game theory. This field includes a large body of recent related work on Wardrop’s equilibria and the price of anarchy (e.g., Koutsoupias and Papadimitriou 1999).

4. Physics-inspired traffic modeling. The phase-based models of Kerner (2004) and various wave-propagation models are examples.

Although the Highway Capacity Manual (Transportation Research Board 2010) does not describe any alternatives or give any rationale about the choices made, it spans four volumes; therefore, fitting all related academic work into a single volume, as An Introduction to Traffic Flow Theory aims to do, is clearly impossible. This volume is generally written clearly; however, the material it covers is not always impartial. One example is the lengthy description of TRANSYT (Robertson 1968), which we can hardly describe as modern, although the University of Florida center that Professor Elefteriadou heads now maintains it.

The target audience is not clear. To effectively use the material in this book, transport planners will need to obtain a copy of the relevant standards, such as are covered in the costly Highway Capacity Manual (Transportation Research Board 2010); its next update is scheduled for publication in 2015. These planners may have little interest in models other than those mandated by the standards. Research departments within transport authorities and in the industry would benefit from a more balanced treatment of related work, including additional references. Arguably, even Gerlough and Capelle (1964) present a more complete overview of the related work, particularly in the field of mathematics. Mathematically mature students might prefer the treatment of Gazis (2002) or Cascetta (2009). A reader from academia would surely want a section that addresses open problems; however, this book mentions open problems only in rare casual remarks, such as “there are currently no relationships developed for oversaturated conditions” (p. 84). Having said that, this volume clearly explains much of what is state of the art in traffic-flow theory. I believe that it has considerable value because it distills large amounts of material into an easily readable textbook that is suitable for a short course.

Jakub Marecek

IBM Research, Dublin, Ireland, [email protected]

Sustainability Appraisal: Quantitative Methods and Mathematical Techniques for Environmental Performance Evaluation

Erechtchoukova, Marina G., Peter A. Khaiter, Paulina Golinska, eds. 2013. Sustainability Appraisal: Quantitative Methods and Mathematical Techniques for Environmental Performance Evaluation. Springer. 254 pp. $148.33.

Environmental concerns, which we refer to as the sustainability problem, are one of today’s trendy topics. Scientific and business books in many research fields, including operations research (Dekker et al. 2012), address this problem; however, because of these concerns, many people in our modern society are concerned that their present lifestyle will not be maintainable during the upcoming decades. In consideration of this situation, Sustainability Appraisal: Quantitative Methods and Mathematical Techniques for Environmental Performance Evaluation presents a set of papers that depict the problem of sustainability appraisal. Given the environmental conundrum in which our world exists, this is a difficult problem. Making good decisions in difficult situations clearly requires much data and the selection of appropriate information. This is the arena in which this book makes its contribution: a discussion of different methodologies to quantitatively measure sustainability concepts in actual situations. This task cannot be done without using indices and indicators, which each chapter includes to provide data to enable decision makers to make suitable decisions.

This book has 11 chapters, including the introduction (Chapter 1). Although the chapters in the book are not numbered, I have numbered them in sequence in this review for convenience. Similarly, it is organized in three sections whose respective titles are: (1) Sustainability Indicators (Chapters 2–4), (2) Trends in Eco-production (Chapters 5–7), and (3) Improving Eco-efficiency: Case Studies (Chapters 8–11). As is typical of edited books, the chapters were written by different contributors; therefore, the reader can read each chapter as an independent entity. Hence, the book’s major contribution is how it connects the designs of different methodologies, which measure sustainability and environmental impact. Because these concepts are common in both scientific and popular literature, a suitable description and ability to measure them is desirable if we are to understand the importance of today’s environmental problems. Sustainability measurability is a key factor to making decisions in situations in which environmental problems are critical; however, developing methods to measure sustainability is a gigantic task with uncertain results (Lera-Lopez et al. 2012, 2013).

Each chapter is autonomous in its organization and in its references. Chapter 1, Dimensions of Sustainability Appraisal, written by two of the editors, provides an introduction to the book and highlights the importance of sustainability indicators. Chapter 2 focuses on the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) sustainability index as an integrated tool for sustainability assessment. This index tries to estimate sustainability performance across countries and over time, ranking countries according to their environmental commitment. Chapter 3 deals with the problem of measuring and evaluating business sustainability by developing and applying a corporate index of sustainability performance. The development of a case study in this chapter helps the reader understand its main concepts. Chapter 4 is dedicated to more sustainability indicators, with particular emphasis on the development and application of indicators for the agricultural sector.

Chapter 5 begins the second section and focuses on eco-innovation. Chapter 6 discusses the environmental, social, and corporate governance factors within companies as essential descriptors of the sustainability ratings. Chapter 7 introduces the role of maintenance as a way of reducing the negative environmental impact of businesses. This chapter illustrates the multifaceted assessment of sustainability.

The third section discusses four real-life situations. Chapter 8 develops a set of sustainability indicators regarding multifaceted aspects for evaluating accessibility performance in the Bangkok metro region in Thailand. Chapter 9 describes how district energy systems can be used to reduce infrastructure and environmental costs; it shows detailed cost savings and other sustainability benefits. Chapter 10 describes the environmental issues associated with the vehicle routing problem, a problem that is popular in today’s scientific literature (Ubeda et al. 2011, Demir et al. 2014). This chapter’s case study of a leading supermarket chain in southern Spain is easy to understand and significant in the area of “green” routing. Finally, Chapter 11 depicts an analytic hierarchy process model to assess the criticality of spare-parts inventory for production processes.

I think this work would be useful to instructors, practitioners, and managers in defining sustainability indices to compare and contrast project results in various companies. Similarly, it could serve as a reference for people searching for new information about sustainability appraisal. In addition, it includes a sufficient number of references to allow readers to focus their attention on the case study details and on the related works of other authors. Although this is an edited book, the structure of each chapter is similar, giving the reader the sense of an integrated book.

In conclusion, I consider Sustainability Appraisal: Quantitative Methods and Mathematical Techniques for Environmental Performance Evaluation to be a good reference for researchers in the fields of environmental sciences, operations research, sustainable economics, green logistics, and environmental engineering. Moreover, practitioners and students of the aforementioned disciplines could also benefit from using the indices discussed to evaluate new projects, considering that this work is a key reference for indices in environmental problems. Thus, it provides a method for quantifying most sustainability concepts.

Javier Faulin

Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Public University of Navarre, Pamplona, Spain, [email protected]

Essays in Production, Project Planning and Scheduling: A Festschrift in Honor of Salah Elmaghraby

Pulat, P. Simin, Subhash C. Sarin, Reha Uzsoy, eds. Essays in Production, Project Planning and Scheduling: A Festschrift in Honor of Salah Elmaghraby. Springer. 414 pp. $179.00.

When I decided to read this book, I must confess that I was generally paying attention only to the words production, project planning, and scheduling, and was disregarding the rest of the title. This book, however, reminded me that production, project planning, and scheduling are very broad topics. Although part of my research focuses on these topics, I was pleased to be introduced to some new subjects and ideas that I had never previously come across. The reader must be aware that this book is true to its title; it is an interesting festschrift in honor of Dr. Salah Elmaghraby, and includes papers from former students, colleagues, and acquaintances.

Dr. Elmaghraby’s research clearly influences the topics that the book covers. The reader should not view it as a textbook, but should see each chapter as an essay, each of which has a significant number of references. Most chapters lack some details of the solution method and some chapters miss some notation. Because the chapters are presented as essays that cover a broad range of topics and approaches, each reader is likely to react differently to this book. To me, some chapters—the ones that suit my research—worked as a teaser for further readings. All in all, I do not regret reading this book.

This festschrift begins with an inspiring chapter on Dr. Elmaghraby’s life (in and out of academia) and his values from the perspective of his daughters. Then follows 14 chapters on operations research (OR) approaches, which are separated into three themes: production planning, project scheduling, and production scheduling. The first five chapters focus on production planning. Of these, I most enjoyed Chapter 2, Ubiquitous Operations Research in Production Systems, because it focuses on the need—and opportunity—to industrialize OR. It makes an interesting observation that “the penetration of OR in production systems decision making is a fraction of what it could and should be. Successful applications are not replicated nearly as often as they could be” (p. 7). This chapter also highlights the challenge of translating a problem into a formulation and informs the reader that during this translation process, interpretation errors can occur between analysts (i.e., OR practitioners) and the stakeholders. Chapter 3, Integrated Production Planning and Pricing Decisions in Congestion-Prone Capacitated Production Systems, presents an integrated model for dynamic pricing and production planning for a single product under workload-dependent lead times. Chapter 4, Refined EM Method for Solving Linearly Constrained Optimization Problems, extends a stochastic search method called electromagnetism-like mechanism (EM) to solve optimization problems. Chapter 5, The Price of Anarchy for a Network of Queues in Heavy Traffic, presents an analytical expression for the price of anarchy for the G1/G1/1 network; that is, instead of a socially optimal allocation of queues, the author examines the impact of letting customers make their own route choices. Chapter 6, A Comparative Study of Procedures for the Multinomial Selection Problem, is the last chapter on production planning and presents a comparative study on the performances of various methods to minimize the expected number of trials required while exceeding a lower bound on the probability of making the correct selection.

Chapter 7, Vulnerability Discussion in Multimodal Freight Systems, is the only chapter related to OR that does not focus on production planning, project scheduling, or production scheduling. This chapter examines the concepts of vulnerability, reliability, resilience, and risk, and the relationships among them, for the freight transportation infrastructure. It also provides valuable insights on how vulnerable and resilient the transportation infrastructure may be to extremely disruptive events.

Chapters 8–11 address the solution to project scheduling problems and may appeal to readers interested on the solution of stochastic problems, dynamic scheduling of newly arrived projects, or the impact of resource allocation. Most of the chapters on project scheduling make reference to and (or) explore Dr. Elmaghraby’s work on activity networks. The last four chapters are dedicated to the solution of production scheduling problems related to flow-shop, job-shop, assembly line, and mine-operation scheduling problems. A myriad of approaches have been proposed as the solution method for these last eight chapters; examples include different heuristics, linear programming, branch-and-bound, and dynamic programming. Therefore, although production, project planning, and scheduling are broad topics, the reader is likely to find appealing chapters and (or) solution methods in this festschrift.

Luiz Carlos de Abreu Rodrigues

Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Brazil, [email protected]