Reliability and Statistics in Transportation and Communication

Since the 1st of January 2013 the public transport is free for residents of the City of Tallinn. People registered outside Tallinn who want to use the public transport have to pay for their trips. Parallel, Tallinn City Governance raised the parking tariffs in the city centre which caused an increase of using of the public transport by 10% and a decrease of car traffic in the city centre by 6%. Currently, the greening of urban transport enjoys a high rank on the political agenda in a lot of European and even some cities are thinking to follow the example of Tallinn. Literature review reveals that scientific papers are focussing mainly on ecological aspects whereas socio-economic studies are neglected. The paper will present insights in social, economic and political aspects which are related to the experience of free public transport in Tallinn. Furthermore, the paper will highlight the role of digitalisation in public transport and discuss the influence of the Estonian e-governance system for the success of the Tallinn case.

The role of the public transport is to secure transportation requirements at the required qualitative level. Current level of the public transport capacity is first and foremost the reflection of the transport services quality level. The particular offers, benefits and disadvantages within the network of the transport system have proven complicated to follow for passengers. Passengers’ decision depends on the offered transport services’ quality. Stops are the gateway to public transport, a place where citizens hesitate if to use public transport services. It depends on the quality of the stops whether the public transport offer is attractive to passengers. According to the quality analysis of the provided services in public transport, which has been carried out in previous years, the quality of public transport stops is one of the most problematic. The article deals with public transport quality evaluation. Methods of the public transport quality evaluation are theoretically described in detail. Methodology of the public transport stops quality evaluation was evolved. The methodology was experimentally verified by conducting a transportation passenger satisfaction survey, which was organized in 2017. The experiment was based on a questionnaire, which was used for a traffic survey of the passengers. This article presents the results of implemented methodology applications, including analysis of the survey using SWOT analysis. Finally, the advantages and opportunities of the practical application of the methodology are assessed.

Improving the economy and environmental friendliness of transport is one of the main directions of transition to a low-carbon economy. The article indicates that road transport has a significant negative impact on the environment. An assessment of the negative impact and benefits of motor vehicles’ transition to alternative fuels is provided. The main directions of transition to the vehicles run on alternative fuels are overviewed in the article. Approaches to reduce environmental damage from motor vehicles are analyzed. The article presents the research results on the example of the bottlenecks of the city road network. The developed simulation model for choosing the optimal configuration of the road network is presented. When constructing the simulation model, the data of full-scale surveys of the structure and intensity of the city traffic flows were used. These surveys were performed together with measurements of the quality of atmospheric air. The ecological effect of the proposed measures is calculated. It is noted that the improvement of the road infrastructure provides the greatest effect of reducing the negative impact on the environment at comparable costs.

Nowadays, the tram knows a new golden age since that modern cities prefer a sustainable mobility. It can give a decent image to the urban area and contributes to meet the increasing mobility demand. Without an optimal operation and a better service, the tram can’t be an efficient means of transport that may help in decongesting road traffic. Passengers would prefer to use vehicles than trams, therefore road traffic will increase and this, will complicate more the state of traffic in cities. This study uses the opinion of tram users. The main objective is to show the strong characteristics that attract the population to use tram and also its weaknesses. This last, may be improved to reach the maximum satisfaction of users. In addition, this article attempts to show the preferred means of transport for passengers who travel on the same line as the tram. The results show that despite the different advantages of the tram, the population is not all satisfied about its exploitation and about its service quality. Almost 40% of passengers, declare that they prefer to use their cars or taxis than a tram; as a result, the road traffic situation may get complicated in the future. Finally, solutions to ameliorate the performance of the tram and its services’ quality are presented, in order to attract more tram users and to minimize the road traffic flow at the same line of Constantine’s tram.

The paper refers sustainable transport development in the European Union especially definitions, principles and guidelines of individual member states. Practice shows that implementation of the principles is not easy, as indicated by various available analyzes and studies of transport systems operating in EU member states. In Poland, also activities are undertaken related to the implementation of these principles into the transport systems of the country, large urban centres, metropolitan areas or cities. Due to the continuous development of transport and ways to implement it, there are still many problems that constitute a barrier that is often not easy to overcome (even financial). The paper points out the problems of implementing the principles of sustainable transport development in the Warsaw Metropolitan Area (WMA). To resolve the problem, research methods were used: analogy, analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction.

In the paper, the problem of determining the crew efficiency indicator was analysed. The limits of the coefficient value were checked. In terms of the theoretical values the Wroclaw City case was studied. Differences between theoretical and empirical values were identified. Their genesis was found and guidance for constructing the timetable was provided. The designers constantly take measures to increase the value of this coefficient, for example by operating several lines by one vehicle. Increasing the length of communication lines - despite making them more susceptible to traffic disruptions—increases the achievable value of the efficiency index, as the length of the course does not affect the time required to perform duties on the loop. The highest values of the indicator are obtained on working days, when the planned transport is the highest. As the number of vehicle kilometres per day decreases, it becomes more difficult to achieve rational index values.

The paper refers to present the results of research carried out at the Motor Transport Institute in Warsaw on the direction of transport infrastructure development in the Eastern Poland and the EU, in the Lublin province, in the aspect of management and organization. The analysis carried out led to the forecasts how this development will affect the transport system of the region and the country. The article also presents the results of research on the economic calculation of postulated changes and transport investments being carried out in the Lublin province. Based on the economic calculation and the analysis carried out, the authors prepared appropriate conclusions and recommendations. We claim that competitiveness and development of the Lublin province will be greater with the development of modern road infrastructure, in the form of the A2 motorway along the section Siedlce—border of Poland in Kukuryki, as well as other expressways (S17, S19 or S12). The economic effect of these road investments will soon return and is associated with serving heavy freight traffic in transit through Poland.

In this paper we proposed a new power plant optimal operation time approach in best energy mixture model. This approach takes into account detailed electricity consumption information and a set of parameters for a number of power plants, including temporal information and cost of the unit of every energy source. As an output the approach provides the capacity split for given power plants to meet the electricity demand. The approach is explained based on Latvia case example. Experimental results show that described approach can be successfully applied to any region or any county in the world individually, involving currently available as well as all potential energy sources, based on calculation and simulation of best energy mixture models.

Many local public transport authorities and operators are in need of replacing ageing bus fleet with cleaner and more sustainable vehicles in order to meet standards, increase efficiency and reduce transport related emissions. There is a wide choice of technologies for urban bus operators in the market including electric buses but at the same time new vehicles beyond lower emission Euro VI diesel buses are still a challenge for transport operators due to high acquisition costs and lack of charging infrastructure. The alternative proposed is to convert used diesel city bus into electric bus. Decision-making process for choosing technology of the bus conversion requires thorough assessment of possible solutions from the technical, operational, and economic point of view under the given conditions and constraints. Within the framework of this research, mathematical models are developed for assessing the efficiency of an electric vehicle on the basis of various criteria which affect life cycle costs. The models include the definition of functional dependencies and dynamic performance equations of a diesel bus and a converted electric bus. The results help to choose the most suitable parameters of the traction motor’s torque and power under the given conditions and determine the most suitable battery type and capacity for the selected bus route. Total Cost of Ownership model is utilized in the decision-making process to determine economic viability of a technological solution to convert a diesel bus into an electric bus. The proposed methodology is tested in the case study.

Women and men often do not experience equal mobility opportunities. Increasingly, gender is being recognized to play a significant role in transport planning, particularly for addressing individual mobility needs in urban and rural areas. Previous studies have shown that transport policy and mobility planning are better suited to men’s activities and mobility needs, while women experience the transport system differently than men in terms of accessibility, safety and security. To gain an in-depth understanding of women travel patterns in their daily activities, this paper investigates the factors that influence women’s decisions between activity participation and choice of transport mode through analysis of mobility behaviour data gathered from 6000 households by Žilina self-governing region between 2013 and 2016. The results of this analysis provide valuable insights about the possible causal relation among socio-demographics, activity participation characteristics and daily travel mode choice of female and male travellers in the studied cities, which could be incorporated into more gender sensitive designs in mobility planning and travel demand modelling. Furthermore, the outcomes of this study can help decision makers, local and regional authorities and transport companies by raising awareness and providing support for (1) forming sustainable policies to overcome community mobility and accessibility challenges and (2) bringing more gender equality in the region of Žilina by changing traditional transport functionalities and providing more equitable provision of transport systems, particularly in public transport and active modes (non-motorised transport).

Rare demand is an important part of the inventory management, nevertheless there are no any appropriate analytical descriptions or numerical examples of it except separate papers where considered the possibility to describe rare demand with Poisson distribution. The divergence between forecasts and actual data could be explained by the following reasons: the first one—extreme values in preforecasting period, as well as not significant ‘length’ of the analyzed time period; the second one—taking data for the forecast from the period of conduction certain actions (sales, promo, etc.), consideration of these actions might be done with combined forecasting methods. The paper describes the approach to assessment of inventory consumption for rare demand based on Poisson distribution. Besides, the paper contains the numerical examples and analysis of the results.

The significant part of air fares is air navigation service charge. Air navigation service providers have opportunity as cover the air traffic control expenses as get a geo-spatial rent abusing their monopolistic nature. Establishing fair air traffic control tariffs needs a model to play different scenarios of tariff changes. An approved method for such a complex task is multi-agent approach. We propose a set of two types of agents: agents of air companies build air routes for all flights minimizing total expenses, agents of air navigation service providers update tariffs trying to maximize income. Based on just two figures reflecting change the tariff and income from air traffic control charge the agent can find a rational tariff in changing environment. Experimental research of this approach on a small air traffic network demonstrated that it is possible to assess effects of different agent’s behavior, as “greedy” when the agent tries to raise the tariff to get maximal spatial rent, as “humble” when it decreases the tariff in order to apply more flights to it’s air control zone.

The wide spread of social media encourages the users to share more often their activities as well as their location, leading to a rapid growth of the data volume. Current research retrieves this user-generated content on social media platforms in an effort to convert them into powerful tools, enabling transport related data collection. In this paper data from Twitter are retrieved and processed to explore their potential for providing transport related data. The main objective is to investigate the reliability of the transport related content retrieved from tweets and the transferability of analytics methods to other cities and languages. The research data set includes thousands of tweets collected in three cities: Minneapolis-Saint Paul twin cities (USA), Riga (Latvia), and Volos (Greece) in May–June 2018. Selection of the research areas is owed to substantially different environments in terms of population, language and transport infrastructure. The collected data were classified into five classes: general transport-related information, real-time information, complain, advice/question, unrelated to transport. Based on the obtained results, a cross comparison was made about efficiency of Twitter as a social media source of transport-related information in different urban environments.

The article presents a simulation model serving for the planning of resources (number of desks) that are necessary for the execution of the check-in process at the airport terminal. The elaborated model may be applied at any airport using conventional desks for the check-in process. We present a stochastic model that presents the degree of schedule adjustment for the fulfillment of the level of service assumptions according to the IATA standards as output data. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in the check-in process modeling, taking into consideration a stochastic character of the process, has not been fully considered yet. A simulation model uses the Monte-Carlo method, basing on the universal characteristics of passenger reports to the check-in with a division of the traditional, low-cost, and charter passengers. The simulation model obtains information on the degree of schedule adjustment for check-in desks to the C level of the service category according to the IATA standards. The application of the simulation model may be applied in the management of the check-in process in order to avoid an overestimation or underestimation of the service work desks schedules.

Within a paper we investigate the influence of dimensionality reduction of feature vector (PCA and random projection) on the results of subject classification of text documents in Polish. Two state of the art methods of text representation have been applied, i.e. bag of words consisting of the most frequent 1000 lemmatized nouns and the emerging fastText based on the word embedding dimensionality equal to 100. The methods have been evaluated on four corpora in Polish (two different data sets, divided into training and testing set in different proportions). Results show that PCA gives better accuracy in all analyzed cases. In case of fastText, a significant reduction of up to 10 times is possible without loss of quality regardless the quality of corpus. To analyse this phenomenon, we have performed a set of experiments in which we train fastText with different values of word embedding dimensionality (from 2 to recommended 100). Experiments show that even the dimension 3–10 (depending on the quality of data) allows to achieve very good accuracy.

The problem of optimizing of the number and geographical location of mobile units of a commercial company of unmanned aircraft vehicles (drones) services, which provide aerial observation and/or aerial mapping services to the relevant customers and facilities on the territory of the region assigned to them. The efficiency criteria and initial conditions are determined. The optimization task is assigned as a Boolean programming task. When choosing the initial conditions, the potentially possible locations of the mobile units are analysed taking into account the geography of the region, the specifics of the weather conditions and of the facilities for the air service delivery. The combinatory method is proposed for solving the optimization task. The difference between the proposed method for solving the given problem and the previously published linear programming method is that, firstly, there are no restrictions on the number of customers assigned to each mobile unit base, and secondly, the method gives optimal, and not suboptimal solutions. The method was applied for optimization of the number of mobile units bases, their locations and attaching customers to them for a real Costa Rican company.

The modern data collection and analysis methods enhance reasonable and effective data-driven decision making in transport planning and have significantly expanded the scope of potential data applications. But if the goal is to use data in transport models for evaluating and predicting, the quality of data becomes crucial.This research is focused on data pre-processing issues such as data understanding, data exploring, and data transformation as an important part of data analysis life cycle rather than transformation models themselves. These phases involve many different tasks and many of the data preparation activities are routine, tedious, and time consuming.In order to resolve this problem the data preparation framework for Markov-modulated linear regression model, considering the limitations and assumptions, was developed. This kind of regression model can be used for public transport passenger flow prediction or other transport planning tasks and suggests that the model parameters vary randomly in accordance with the external environment. The developed framework is applied on data concerning Riga tram route trip validation captured by e-ticket system “E-talons” and the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre database. R software is used in conjunction with a set of libraries.

This paper describes a new approach of data retrieval from free text documents in medical domain. Proposed approach creates the document summary and highlights most important keywords in the text by means of document ontology, as an internal representation of the document. This document ontology is a graph with concepts, relations between them, and concept points as a metric of relevance. By means of points the approach performs ambiguity resolution, selects most relevant concepts to display in the summary, and votes for keywords highlighting in the text. Moreover, interactive highlighting reveals additional information from document ontology as reader interacts with the keywords and summary in the document. The described approach helps to speed up analysis and decision-making processes by means of providing aggregated summary for a document and highlighting most meaningful parts of the text.

The recent rise of electric vehicles (EV) brings social and technological changes in the transportation and energy sectors, including the massive deployment of charging stations. To provide effective decision support for the operators of charging stations, we are exploring possibilities for exploiting the available dataset and present results of preliminary data analyses. Our dataset contains over 32 million meter-readings from charging of plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) on more than 1700 charging stations, located in the Netherlands. Based on the discussions with experts and the available literature, three main application areas were identified: forecasting of demanded energy, identification of customer segments and characterization of suitable locations for charging stations. As an example of a use case, we forecast the consumption of the electric energy on charging stations in the COROP region of Utrecht. Two kinds of SARIMAX model together with three kinds of training-forecasting procedure are used with various exogenous predictors to identify, which combination provides the best long-term forecasts.

The paper is focusing on the research of the influence of road construction materials on magnetic field dispersion and transmission efficiency. During the research samples of the road surfaces were created using most widely used road surface construction materials in Latvia and the test bench was built in accordance with SAE J2954. The influence of asphalt and concrete road surface materials on the magnetic field of the transmitting coil of the WPT system at a frequency of 85 kHz was investigated. It was determined that efficiency dropped with NaCl solution on concrete road surface.

Since the beginning of using parallelized computing units it is known that the actual performance is less than the possible nominal performance: the unproductive part of the computing performance remains “dark”. It is also known that the amount of dark performance strongly depends on the number of parallelly working processing units, so its role must be crucial for supercomputers, where in the coming exa-scale models millions of processors are utilized, as well as for the exa-scale applications they are running, like brain simulation and Earth simulation. Although the effects affecting parallel performance are known from the beginning, their relative weights have been considerably changed with the development of the field and strongly depend on the type of application. For large computer systems the “dark performance” represents a new major obstacle, in addition the former ones, like “heat wall”, “memory wall”, “dark silicon”, etc. The careful reconsideration discovers that in contrast with the general belief, supercomputer performance has an upper limit, and reaching that limit explains some strange and mysterious events, like canceling projects immediately before their target date or that the special-purpose brain simulator cannot outperform the many-thread simulator running on a general-purpose supercomputer.

In the paper the reliability of container-based cloud PaaS architecture is discussed. In practice, when organizing container-based access to user applications, it is of interest to determine the availability of a separate dedicated container with a user application. In this case if the failure of another service for another user has come, for this particular user this failure from the position of reliability is not critical. In the article the availability of a dedicated user container in the system with container-based PaaS architecture is studied. The mathematical model of the reliability of a separate dedicated container with a user application in the real conditions of operation is developed. Expressions for availability of application operation in dedicated user container are developed.

The charging systems for mobile devices that support Wireless Power Transfer technology are under consideration. Most popular wireless charging standards are used and on this basis effective prototype is realized. Power Transfer Efficiency of the two-stage prototype is no worse than 60–70% at distances of 15–20 cm. The measurements of emitted magnetic fields are presented.

Modern telecommunication and data processing systems perform the processing of calls or data packages in several stages. These processes are simulated and investigated by using tandem queues or networks. The following case of two stages is considered in the paper. There exist N independent Poisson flows of elementary messages. The intensity of the i-th flow equals λi > 0. Based on the incoming elementary messages, a complex message is formed according to the following rules. (1) A complex message does not contain more than hi ≥ 1 elementary messages of the i-th flow. (2) The generation of a complex message ends if the number of elementary messages in some flow reaches the maximal value. The complex message that has been generated is sent to a one-line queueing system. Such a system has not been previously discussed in the literature. Different indices of the described process are calculated, such as the distribution of elementary message generation time, the distribution of the queue length for complex messages, etc. The obtained results conform to airport control systems.

The last years the telecommunication sector constantly evolve. Estimating parameters as the probability of a rare event has applications in reliability, telecommunications, insurance, and several other areas. The rare events such as blocking, overflows and losses in new generation networks, especially in systems with very low probability, are one of the major estimation problems for ordinary simulation methods. Speed-up simulation is the most convenient method for estimation of rare events. The main purpose of the research is to determine and compare the significant parameters for speed-up simulation of SDN. The simulations opportunities represent a chance to reduce the digital divide and to ensure SDN with minimum cost of time and financials. The simulation of teletraffic models allows the modelling of resource management issues, admission of system users with different parameters.

This paper contains a review of modern intelligent methods’ applications for digital forensics. One of the main problems of digital forensics, which was investigated by authors, is related to the fact that a huge volume of data needs to be analysed for evidence of crime. The primary aim of this work is to improve this challenging forensic process through application of intelligent methods for analysis of digital evidences. The desired outcome of this work is to encourage advancing these methods in a forensic science discipline.

New methods for enhancing the plasticity and strengthening the surface layers of materials for aircraft industry are proposed. The modes of dynamic non-equilibrium processes (DNP) are grounded, which under the symmetric impact-oscillatory loading can significantly improve the plastic properties of two-phase high-strength titanium alloys. Of particular note is that processing was carried out at room temperature. The combined application of impact-oscillatory loading and nanotechnology has enhanced the strength and hardness of the surface layers of titanium alloy VT23. The results obtained can be used to improve the reliability of materials of aviation transport, as well as spacecraft.

The paper is focusing on to the research of the possibility of using of SiC MOSFETs and GaN-transistors in wireless power transmission systems. To carry research eGaN EPC2034 transistors and SiC transistors C3M0065090J have been used, since these transistors have good frequency properties and small cases. The power inverter hybrid modules were created with chosen transistors. The frequency properties of modules of power inverters were researched when silicone oil was used for direct liquid cooling by of modules. The efficiency assessments is presented for the created modules.

In the note, we examine several off-the-shelf object detecting convolutional neural networks in simulated low-light conditions, typical for surveillance and automotive vehicle applications. We propose the test procedure and its present its formal background. The preliminary results suggest that such ready-to-use networks are viable tools in the mentioned applications.

Real-time monitoring systems now often use complex event processing software and in this paper we analyze performance of such an approach in a simple case study. After introducing briefly the main concepts of event processing networks we define the case of detecting anomalies in a stream of two events which, in correct operation, should appear in pairs keeping precise temporal relation. For such a stream we propose two event processing networks for detection of specific anomalies which are then implemented on the PROTON software platform and tested as RESTful web applications. The performance tests include two scenarios for generation of the input events and show the average system response time as a function of the increasing load (the stream of incoming events). The results identify limitations of the tested implementation which are related to deficiencies of massive multi-threaded processing in the Java environment.

Main aim of the paper was to create checkers player move aided system. For this purpose two different approaches were used. First one was well known searching algorithm—Negamax and second one was Reinforcement Learning algorithm—SARSA. For the purpose of making experiments on algorithms’ performance special environment was created. It was checkers program which main goal was to give its user possibility of launching the game between two different agents. One of its constraints was also to make creating and adding new agent easy for the future use in other research.

The issue of appropriated range of electricity market price forecasting in the problem of enterprise’s electricity consumption expenses optimisation is considered. Various kinds of battery energy storage systems (BESS) for small enterprises, as well as control algorithms for energy consumption expenditures, cost reduction, are considered. The estimation of accuracy of hourly electricity price time series forecasting with the artificial neural networks (ANN) algorithm is made with step-by-step increasing depth of the forecast. It is shown that for the optimal control of electricity consumption forecast makes sense no more than for about of few hours (or tens hours) ahead only depending on the forecast errors.

Simulation models are still often only part for decision support in the planning area. For short-term decisions at the operational level, there have been good fundamentals since the 1990s, but still relatively few implementations, especially in the logistics sector. Our approach is to use real-time data to provide short-term forecasts, by using a simulation model that provides required information. Due to current hardware and a well-chosen degree of abstraction of the model, real-time decision support (“real-time” means in this context: fast enough to support the decision) is possible. This paper presents a concept of a procedure model for the realization of such operational simulation-based decision support, applied to the picking area of an industrial laundry. The operational use of the simulation model is part of the project “Laundry Order Consolidation System (LOCSys)”, which aims to improve the picking & storing processes in the clean area of an industrial laundry through automation.

Loading points are indispensable elements in the systems of goods delivery by cargo bikes. The choice of the loading points location is a basic issue to be solved when designing cargo distribution systems. The paper proposes an approach to justifying the location of loading points based on computer simulations of the delivery process with the use of cargo bikes. In the developed mathematical model, we present consignees as vertices of the transport network, while the graph edges reflect the sections of the road network. We propose to quantify requests for transport services with numerical parameters, among which the most significant are the size of the consignment, its dimensions, the time interval between requests, and the delivery distance. The developed mathematical model was applied for choosing the loading point localisation for the system of cargo deliveries in the Krakow Old Town: demand parameters for transport of goods in the Old Town area were presented as random variables, the existing road network model was formed, and the system simulations for the alternative locations of a loading point were provided. The simulation results allowed us to substantiate such a loading point location which is characterised by minimal value of the total transport work.

In the transition to a circular economy, there is a need of new logistic approach, reverse logistics. Organization of spare parts delivery in the PC “KAMAZ” in transition to circular economy is considered. We have developed the concept of the Decision Support System to predict, plan and organize new spare parts delivery and faulty spare parts return delivery. The algorithm of spare parts delivery including reverse deliveries for remanufacturing is proposed. Decision Support System based on this algorithm consists of Data Storage module, OLAP-cube, spare parts failure statistics analysis module and simulation modules. Mathematical model to plan spare parts delivery is presented.

To date, a diverse array of expert assessments for quantitative (tangible) and qualitative (intangible) objects based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been accumulated in various fields of knowledge. The systematization and analysis of the collected data made it possible to put forward the hypothesis that some of the indicators (the eigenvalue of the matrix, the consistency index, and the ration of consistency) can be considered in the form of aggregates of random variables representing an intellectual product and reflecting features of human thinking. The systematization and statistical processing of the results obtained by experts on the basis of the AHP showed that the distribution functions of the values of expert estimates for the consistency indices significantly differ from the similar functions of the generated matrices.

In the article the logistics management and SCM organizational structures research findings that were conducted by the NRU HSE International Centre of Training in Logistics in 2014–2016 are considered. The sample of companies operating on Russian market accounted about 400 organizations. The form for the respondents of online survey was created. Each participant estimated the logistics management organizational structure (logistic and/or SCM department) individually. The assessment was conducted from the perspective of the correspondence between the organizational structure and corporate and logistics strategies, key business processes, organizational structure management efficiency, functional employees allocation and so on in the different aspects of supply chains and logistics controlling. The examples of typical logistics management structures of line and staff, matrix and project oriented structures are shown. Taking into consideration the importance of the SCM best practices and innovative technologies usage, the questions are highlighted in detail and a great variety of examples in SCM departments organizational planning are given.

Although European regional airports contribute considerably to regional accessibility of peripheral and remote regions as well as to socio-economic development, it might be stated that they face severe challenges nowadays. The number of loss making regional airports in Europe keeps increasing. The EU Commission has clearly stated that the public support and financial aids cannot be seen as a sustainable stimulation measure for efficient and durable airports’ operations any longer, i.e. the public support to regional and small airports in Europe will be cut. Nevertheless, regional airports can play the role as motors for regional development and growth. On the other hand, the EU introduced and promoted Green Transport Corridor concept as a cornerstone for the development of integrated and sustainable transport solutions based on trans-nationality, multi-modality and a high involvement of public and private stakeholders, including the political level. A limited research has been executed about the integration of regional airports into Green Transport Corridors and which role road feeder services can play in this context. This paper investigates potential role of air cargo and especially road feeder services for the integration of regional airports into Green Transport Corridors as well as favorable conditions for sustainable regional development. Based on the empirical results of these projects, the research focuses on the different concept of Road Feeder Services or “air trucking services” for air cargo and their possible role for the integration of regional airports into Green Transport Corridors. Special attention is paid to the discussion of the tentative role of the air cargo security regulations for third countries in Europe (ACC3) as well as to possible integration air cargo into the concept of Green Transport Corridors. Since the action research of this study was executed in the Baltic Sea region, the presented results includes specifics of this region.

Planetary stages of gearboxes remain one of the main issue of helicopter health monitoring because of its complicated vibration signature containing multiple modulated signals. Authors analysed different vibration techniques allowing to step ahead in planetary gearboxes diagnostics and found some limitations for its industrial application. Based on the overview new requirements are considered to advance technique for planetary gears diagnostics. Aiming to develop diagnostic abilities of planetary gears, the paper discusses basic principles of its time-spatial model and main stages of data development, including: data separation by narrowed time window, vibration frequency range choice and transfer functions, spatial mesh modelling and Spatial Time Domain Distribution (STDD). Samples of STDD application on a helicopter gearbox are considered. There are conclusions about practical application availability of STDD for helicopter gearbox diagnosis.

The paper considers vibration paths properties of gas turbine engine non-rotating parts aimed for application for vibration diagnostics, specifically in Vibropassport™ as the methodical and algorithmic platform for practical application. Authors discuss reasons for transfer features research and application in vibration diagnostics. Some specialties of transfer features are considered for different types of excitation sources, like a whole rotor or separate gear. Low frequency range and wide frequency band vibrations generated by such sources need different approach to experimental testing techniques. The general view is given on experimental techniques for testing of integral aggregates and smaller excitation sources of an engine. There is analysis of transfer features of concentrated and distributed multiple sources as well as some samples of experimental testing and transfer coefficients determination. Main areas of transfer properties in application of engine vibration diagnostics are considered. The paper includes conclusions regarding discussed matters and tasks for further works.

At present time SEVSAT is in use on board of ships for the providing of broadband communication channel between the ship and the coast via satellites in geostationary orbits. In the measurements the parameters of satellite channel, depending on various external affecting factors, were obtained. The experiments were made on real equipment with various combinations of ship position, sea state, weather conditions. Based on the results of the experiments the statistical analysis of the influence of various factors was performed.

The number of passengers carried by air transport has been growing every year in the world during the last decade. The average annual growth rate of air passengers has been 8.4% since 2008 [1]. Such an increasing demand for air traffic services has posed plenty of challenges, such as larger airports or increased network congestion, to the management of air traffic.“Oro navigacija” manages air traffic in all four Lithuanian international airports.The Lithuanian State Enterprise “Oro navigacija” needs to take acute decisions to substantially upgrade its competitive advantage in today’s extremely challenging environment for the management of air traffic. A multiple remote tower could be a right way forward. Its main merit is cost-efficiency: it has a potential to bring about sizeable cost savings. It would also allow for the more even distribution of the workload of air traffic controllers among all the airports in Lithuania. In addition, a multiple remote tower would turn “Oro navigacija” to a modern R&D knowledge centre.The preliminary cost benefit analysis indicates that it would be beneficial financially to establish a multiple remote tower for providing air traffic services to three national airports in Lithuania.

The main paper problem is to discuss safety status on road transport system in the European Union and how to improve it, especially by reduction number of victims. In theoretical part refers Sect. 2, the following research methods were used: analysis, analogy, synthesis, induction and deduction. Characteristics of road transport infrastructure, counties of the most and smallest total length of motorways, and the statistics of road accidents, dead and wounded people in the European Union were presented. Furthermore the paper discussed the characterization of dangerous goods in the EU and the advantages and disadvantages of road transport. In practical part refers Sect. 3, apart from mentioned theoretical, the empirical methods were applied: modelling and tests. Based the initiatives of the EU for road transport safety, some solutions of research projects in Poland were described, especially program of analyzing data from digital tachograph and smart cards, functional structure of National Automatic Toll Collection System with proposition of OBU and also methodic and prototype of eCall system. The paper resolved the main problem, the number of victims in the EU was significantly reduced from 54,900 in 2001 to 25,300 in 2017, by initiatives, legislative procedures and implemented Intelligent Transport Systems.

The main goal of the research is to determine the level of importance of the IT decision support systems for the efficiency of crisis management processes, and system’s operational continuity. Such detailed research problem determines the specific goals involving: (1) identification of the key processes for the continuity of operation within the system; (2) establishing the relationship between the decision time and system continuity; (3) exposing the methods and means proper for optimizing the decision-making time in crisis management situations. The final development of the research problem required the use of inquiry procedures, prior to analytical involvement, centered on the theory of strategy, as well as on the SWOT techniques, and desk research techniques. Certain primary, as well as derivative propositions of the theory of autonomous systems (TSAs) have been accepted as already defined. The terminological conventions contained within the TSA were also used, along with the derivative concepts significant to the specific rules of defining the theory. The innovative goal of such scrutiny, extending the existing state of scientific knowledge in security research, which is at the same time a praxeological directive, is to show that information processes are the foundation of the system’s autonomy, i.e. maintaining the business continuity. Nonetheless, decision-making time is a key parameter in crisis management. Therefore, streamlining information flow (communication), and shortening the decision-making time, at the level of management and contractor duties, requires the implementation of the IT systems that are able to receive and handle the data in real time.

The multidimensional spectrum of security predicaments forces a question about compatibility and complexity of various solutions to threats and dangers. The number of problem responsive solutions grows, yet, the ability of countering is not always a guarantee. The State institutions responsible for security in various fields, must deal with those problems strategically, but this is also an issue in any field of operation, including business and management, or others. The author probes those problems stemming from following question: How complexity of a system, or systems using different approaches, technologies and techniques retains unity of the whole, and its capability in practical response to threats. This is considering the fact, that innovative techniques and new technologies give us ability for fast response, but also for multiplications of false results, and new threats within the security system as a whole. In view of this author, through comparative, analytical and phenomenological methods, examines factors linked to theoretical propositions, where base terminology used rests on security studies and political science, but is generative of scientific fields. Author suggests that the multiplication of complex system solutions brings about new variables, and therefore, also possible failures. The scope of research is bound by outlook based on processes and scientific solutions, aiming at synthetic view of possible threats, and solution propositions worked out by the researchers of the Military University of Technology in Warsaw.

The article refers the study of the behaviors of drivers while approaching the intersections with traffic lights. It is an element of the active safety system of traffic participants. This study presents the results of testing the ability (accuracy) of the distance assessment on the road by drivers, when approaching the stop line of the intersection. The existence of a so called “dilemma zone”, its extent and location relative to the stop line is not physically determined prior to the intersection. When the traffic light signal is changing, the driver must assess his distance to the intersection. What is more, the driver must also accurately assess and determine the location of the ‘dilemma zone’ and decide, whether to continue driving or start the stopping of the vehicle. When approaching an intersection with a changing signal, the driver finds himself in a risky situation. Sudden braking might surprise the following driver and lead to the rear end collision. If the drive is continued, the driver might enter the intersection after the red light signal has already turned on. Making the right decision depends, among other things, on the accurate assessment of the distance of the vehicle from the intersection with a minimum error. The driver must do it in a very short time. Extending the decision-making time is detrimental to the driver. Pilot surveys were conducted on a group of over 200 people. For this purpose, a questionnaire was prepared and four vehicle positions with known distances to the stop line were proposed. The vehicle positions symbolized the set of traffic bollards next to the road. The respondents assessed the distance between individual bollards, as vehicles in front of the stop line. The results confirmed the initial hypothesis that there is a large error of distance assessment made by drivers. This situation is encouraging to committing offenses and the occurrence of collisions and road accidents, so the need for additional training of drivers was indicated. In addition, it is necessary to consider marking the critical points on the road, e.g.: the “dilemma zone”, enabling and facilitating the correct assessment of distance and choosing the right behavior.

Fatigue failure of high strength steel shafts in different mechanisms leads to expensive replacement of shaft or the entire mechanism. Fatigue failure usually takes place in stress concentration areas. One of the effective methods to improve shafts fatigue characteristics is surface hardening by rolling [1]. In order to reach maximum fatigue life of the shaft the process of calibration, selection of rolling parameters (roller section radius, curvature, rolling force, etc.) [2] and non-uniform rolling influence are described in this article. The task was to design a bolted joint that has to fail by shear under specified load conditions. To ensure these requirements two grooves with certain geometry are made on bolt’s surface. Grooves decreased fatigue life of the bolted joint several times. In order to repair fatigue characteristics, groove areas were hardened by surface rolling. Several computer models were made in order to select optimal hardening parameters and understand how non-uniform hardening effects fatigue life. Numerical results were verified by experimental data. As a result necessary rolling parameters were selected and fatigue life of shafts with stress concentrations (grooves) increased no less than 3 times.

The reliability analysis of technical object, particularly determine the lifetime distributions over time, requires knowledge of the course of functional characteristics of elements included in a given system. Having a database of damage times for individual components, it is easy to determine the average working time to damage the element and the standard deviation for this time, the problem arises when selecting the appropriate form of distribution. Incorrect determination of the type of damage distribution of technical object elements may cause a large error in the results of the reliability and durability assessment of the system. Not having enough data to verify the hypothesis of the form of distribution, commonly, depending on the case considered, the form of the density function of damage or cumulative distribution is assumed. Knowing the course of the probability of damage over time, preventive actions can be taken before the risk of damage reaches the limit value, thus avoiding financial losses and ensuring an adequate level of security. The paper presents methods for assessing the reliability of tested elements for the first failure using the most commonly used distributions in the reliability theory. The results of calculations were compared for several cases. The calculations were carried out for selected components of the rail vehicle.

Vehicles of municipal transportation are complex, multi-component technical objects that require high reliability and safety level and, on the other hand, ensure high level of quality and low cost of service. These requirements and limitations need reliable information for making reasonable decisions. Operators tend to use advanced information concerning daily usage, maintenance, reliability, costs, and many other aspects. Paper shows possibility of application of the generalized gamma distribution family in prediction of the corrective maintenance of fleet vehicles. In this paper, the mileage expressed in kilometres is used as the lifetime of individual tram components. To illustrate the method of adaptation of operational data concerning the fleet of 45 trams, assessments of unknown parameters of the distribution of mileage to damage of a very important tram component, i.e. the drive controller, were determined. The estimation of parameters includes censored data prepared according to the developed method of processing the operational database. As the next step, on the basis of this distribution and the knowledge about the mileage of the currently used drive controllers, the conditional their unreliability were determined in the subsequent periods of using the tram fleet. The results obtained can be used by fleet operators to plan vehicle corrective maintenance.

Samples obtained from natural gas pipelines were used directly for determine the regularities in corrosion steels 17G1S-U and 20 under the influence of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) of type Desulfovibrio sp. strain Kyiv-10 and their relation to the microstructure of steel in condition that simulated a natural gas pipeline environment. Microbiological corrosion induced by SRB of pipeline steel 17G1S-U and steel 20 were studied. The impact of the inhibitors nature on the specimen protection degree under the development of anaerobic corrosion under the influence of SRB is investigated.

One of the main strategic goals declared in the common European transport policy—development of efficient, environment-friendly, sustainable transport system. The key prerequisites for the realization of this ambitious goal is development of national and international co-modal transport systems, that are based on the interoperability of different transport modes. Interoperability itself is also hard to implement without proper arrangement of legal framework, organizational measures and, finally, interconnected transport infrastructures of different transport modes (common multimodal transport network). The goal of this article is to present the results of the study aimed at identification of key shortages of transport network in Lithuania. The tasks were set in order to reach the goal: to identify the factors that led to such situation, and to discuss conceptual models that might be useful in changing current situation.

Today, cities devise their own Sustainable Urban Logistics Plan (SULP) to improve the sustainability of their distribution system. Modern SULPs, following the development of technology, consider smart solutions e.g. pick-ups and deliveries by electric vehicles, bicycles or drones, city lockers, ITS systems for planning/routing, crowdsourcing services and other, which aim at mitigating the negative effects of the freight transport in the urban area. The effectiveness of these solutions, however, is not for sure, since their performance relies on particularities of cities’ urban freight transport system as well as the level of infrastructure, cooperation and policy adoption. To better understand and assess the impacts of a proposed solution in a city context, ex-ante evaluation through modeling is advised.This study synthesizes the types of simulation techniques that are used to model the impacts of innovative smart urban freight solutions. A systematic literature review was performed in Web of Science Core Collection, SCOPUS and JSTOR databases to identify records that tackle with modeling smart urban freight solutions and present real case study results. Having gathered all relevant records through a query-based identification process, a screening process was adopted to keep only those that have an essential contribution to the topic. Eighty-two full papers met the criteria and were included in the qualitative analysis. Analysis’ key findings were that (1) the majority of studies use custom-made techniques for the evaluation of urban freight solutions, (2) there is growing tendency from 2015 onwards for such studies and, (3) “ITS for freight monitoring and planning/routing” is the most prominent solution in such studies.

This paper deals with the question of how measures of transport integration can benefit the public transport system in the Latvian capital Riga and its surrounding area. The public transport system is currently highly fragmented with a variety of operators which lack tariff and timetable coordination. Two concepts with different levels of transport integration are developed and evaluated for their consequences on various fields. The consequences are expected to unfold in slightly higher transport volumes and higher customer satisfaction. While the costs of organization are likely to decrease due to centralization, new integrated tariff models might reduce the revenues. Measurable environmental effects will not unfold in a short period.

This paper focuses on active travel accessibility and the required actions to achieve a satisfying level of non-motorized access to urban interchanges. To this end, a systematic literature review was conducted, related to active travel policy measures and actions, as well as to measures aiming at the promotion of walking and cycling and the improvement of access to public transport terminals. This process was necessary in order to identify good practices and successful interventions implemented in Europe, but also to indicate potential legal, operational and infrastructure gaps and bottlenecks. Based on the above, the public transport system of Riga was investigated in terms of legislation, infrastructure, safety and space availability, addressing active travel accessibility to and from the main urban interchanges: Riga International Coach Terminal, Riga Central Railway Station and Riga Passenger Port Terminal. The critical assessment of the literature review findings and the analysis of the Riga transport system facilitated the drafting of recommendations for stakeholders and decision makers, who wish to put together action plans geared towards tackling the issue of active travel accessibility at urban interchanges.

The design of an optimal interchange depends on the local environment and individual preferences of users on modal choices. Various issues in quality are important for good interchange management and operation, and priorities may significantly differ among different interchanges. This paper aims to investigate and assess the performance level of four interchanges in Riga, Latvia: Riga International Coach Terminal, Riga Central Railway Station, Riga International Airport and Riga Passenger Terminal that serves cruise ships.To achieve the aim of this study, a structured form was used for face-to-face interviews, and key stakeholders of each interchange were invited to give their feedback in selected items.

The article deals with the main processes occurring at the automobile-railway container terminal. The main economic entities of the automobile-railway communication are distinguished, including the owner of the railway infrastructure, the operator of the railway rolling stock, the container terminal and a road carrier. A technique is proposed for determining optimal parameters for the operation of terminal complexes, which is based on minimizing the amount of costs of all the participants in the transportation process. There is a need to revise the criteria for optimizing the calculation of the optimal amount of loading and unloading mechanisms, taking into account the costs for over-normal idle hours of motor vehicles under loading (unloading), over the planned time of work performance and costs due to idle time of the railway rolling stock on public roads in anticipation of loading (unloading). This technique assumes that the arrival of containers is a random stream of events, and the entire complex of terminal hardware is a service channel. The incoming flow of containers is classified based on the overall and weight characteristics. The results of the study show that when determining the optimal amount of loading and unloading mechanisms, it is necessary to take into account the costs associated with interdependent idle time of loading and unloading mechanisms, rolling and automobile stock. The additional time spent on the cargo deconsolidation, as well as the possibility of delivering lightweight containers in pairs, significantly affect the processing of the incoming container flow at the terminal. As a result of the study, it has been established that the interdependent idle time of transport and loading and unloading mechanisms is significantly reduced, taking into account the volumetric and weight characteristics of containers, the probabilistic arrival nature and the assessment of the transport capacity of vehicles used to deliver containers to the final consumers. It has been established that the savings of the total costs of the container terminal of Chelyabinsk Cargo Station and the losses of carriers when organizing loading and unloading operations based on the presented methodology will amount to 9%.

This paper reports on the unsupervised learning approach for solving stock keeping units segmentation problem. The dataset under consideration contains 2279 observations with 9 features. Since the “ground truth” is not known, the research aims to compare such clustering algorithms as K-means, mean-shift and DBSCAN based only on the internal evaluation, thus, this research may be considered as descriptive cluster analysis. Besides that, several preprocessing techniques are utilized in order to improve the result.

Green shipping enjoys high attention on the environmental agenda of the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). After the implementation of the SECA regulation in BSR in 2015, the next step towards cleaner shipping will be the NECA regulation from 2021. Both emission control measures represent a partial but important position in the socio-economic impact of green shipping comprising occupational health, safety and environmental issues.It is still not clear if green jobs are safe for workers and this poses new challenges for occupational health and safety—such as new emerging risks related to new technologies, dangerous chemicals, processes, workforce and demographic changes. Traditionally, shipping is perceived to be a relatively dangerous industry since maritime sector workers are often exposed to long hours of demanding working conditions, isolation, rigid organisational structures and high levels of psychological stress and physical fatigue that could lead to occupational diseases, accidents and harm.The presented research is empirically validated by survey results, primary data analysis and expert interviews and explores the possible occupational health risks of the Baltic Sea shipping workers to determine their work-health related challenges. The results are further discussed vis-a-vis the impact of SECA regulations on maritime workers.

Over the past 25 years Latvia has rapidly evolved into a modern European state. Dramatic changes in the political and economic system of Latvia also accompanied the reforms in the field of public administration. Public administration reforms started in 1990 and the current planning period (2014–2020) is already the fourth most significant stage in the development of public administration policy. However, in the author’s opinion the greatest influence on the development of the state administration system was left to the process of preparation for Latvia’s accession to the European Union and becoming a member of the EU.Transport is one of the central elements of the process of European integration, which helps to create an internal market conducive to employment and economic growth. Transport policy is one of the common policies of the European Union that has existed since the beginnings of the EU, as it was considered essential to guarantee three of the four freedoms of the common market set out in the Treaty of Rome in 1957—the freedom of movement of people, services and goods.There is no doubt that also Latvia’s transport sector has evolved as a member of the European Union. The implementation of the EU legislation, technical, social and environmental standards has taken place, and very significant investments have been made for infrastructure development.At the same time, it is difficult to find any comprehensive report on the particular impact of accession to the EU on the Latvian transport sector and the consequences of this accession. Therefore the author made a research trying to answer following questions: What changes in the improvement of the normative base and the development of infrastructure have taken place in the transport sector of the Republic of Latvia from 1999 to 2016? How has the transport policy changed in the time after Latvia’s accession to the European Union? What effects of economic, social and environmental impact in the transport sector have caused Latvia’s accession to the European Union?Current paper is a short summary of this research.

This article is evaluating if as of the 2017 there is an objectively justifiable necessity for governmental subsidies for purchasing electric vehicles (hereinafter—EV) in Latvia. The analysis was carried out using Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) approach and comparing all costs for electric and internal combustion engine vehicles using pair analysis. The time period was chosen to assess how the technological and market developments had affected the requirement for government subsidies for EV purchase since the development of Latvia National Electromobility plan in 2013. The study demonstrated that there was a significant difference in TCO and subsequently in the justification for purchase subsidies between various classes of vehicles as well as even within a single class of cars, depending on the vehicle manufacturer, hence, several possible approaches for subsidies were examined to recommend the most effective form for subsidizing EV purchases.

The modern aspects of the supply and logistics chains cannot be restricted by national borders. The strategists of the national transport policy must address new challenges of globalization to attain common pursuits by harmonizing actions when advanced international transport chains and corridors are established. Constantly changing and improving business environment demands re-assessing and re-analysing the importance of logistics and marketing as well as its functions and interaction. The links between logistics and marketing are significant as merging these functions and adapting it into company’s activities may increase profits and improve the quality of services. On the other hand, the important factor is the environment in which all these matters emerge. In this case, the awareness of socio-cultural environment becomes vital.The aim of this research—to conduct an assessment on the role of the socio-cultural environment in the context of global logistics.The analysis of company’s activities from the perspective of socio-cultural environment involves essential factors influencing these activities: traditions, language awareness, negotiation skills, attitudes towards overtime work, etc. However, the awareness of socio-cultural environment is not of the least importance. The article provides assessment results on the role of the socio-cultural environment in the context of global logistics. As suggested by results, the socio-cultural environment has a major impact on global businesses, especially logistics. Diverse regions are distinguished for its characteristic socio-economic environment which often causes certain difficulties in international negotiations that are common in logistics activities.

Statistical data suggest that Latvian women entrepreneurs are amongst the most active business founders in Europe. According to the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, 10% of women aged between 18 and 64 in the country have started their own businesses of which the majority were found to lead small or micro-companies, which ultimately results in about 40% of all small and micro- size Latvian companies being run by women. What makes these women different from other professionals? Given the fact that many women reside in similar contexts but not all of them become entrepreneurs, the aim of this research was to identify personality characteristics of women entrepreneurs in Latvia. In order to translate the global aim into research questions, the Big Five model of personality, which is a dispositional model, was deployed in a questionnaire format. As for the specifics of the research questions, they were created based on a review of a few Big Five Personality Tests and targeted verification of previous research findings on women entrepreneurs in other countries. Earlier women were found to score higher on Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience and lower on Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Based on earlier research findings on Extraversion, this trait was suggested to play a moderate role. Since personalities reside in a social context, another aim was to identify one most powerful factor beyond the personality dimensions that has encouraged them to engage in entrepreneurial activities. To attain this aim, participants were asked a question of the most influential factor that affected their decision to start and sustain their enterprises. The obtained data were discussed in a broader context.

The tourism trends analysis explores the main trends for Latvian inbound and domestic tourism providing statistical data collected over a ten-year period. The research uses the official statistical absolute data and relative data stemmed from the author’s assessment. The paper outlines low consumption of Latvian hotel offers, non-resident accommodation demand with the number of nights spent annually, showing a sluggish acceleration of inbound tourism revenue, with a general decrease in non-resident spending per day and popularity of rural tourism services. The conducted statistical data analysis results in determining a new way to encourage the export of Latvian travel-related services by establishing a new distribution channel grounded on service aggregation in the framework of the New Distribution Capability model introduced by the IATA.

The research paper studies whether there is any influence or linkage between the management of long-lived non-financial assets and performance of Latvian companies listed on Baltic stock exchange within the system of corporate governance. The research paper is based on the analysis of theoretical literature and research papers within the area of information provided about companies’ financial statements and the management of long-lived non-financial assets. Furthermore, the research focuses on investigation and analysis of mutual influence between the management of long-lived non-financial assets and performance of Latvian companies listed on Baltic stock exchange within the system of corporate governance. The aim of the research is to examine relationship between the management of long-lived non-financial assets and performance of Latvian companies listed on Baltic stock exchange. This research is limited to the performance of Latvian listed companies on Baltic stock exchange and research period is from year 2007 to year 2017. Results of this research might be of interest of academic researchers as well as educators and practitioners analyzing information provided in financial statements of listed companies on stock exchange as well as any other companies having significant proportion of long-lived non-financial assets from ones’ balance sheet value. Conducted research enabled to define new recommendations relating the management of long-lived non-financial assets.

The article presents selected aspects of operations of enterprises representing creative industries in Poland, particularly service companies were investigated. Moreover, there are combined two topics in the paper, i.e. the risk management as a basis for developing the objectives for the business continuity assurance system (for the core, i.e. innovative processes), as well as the functionality of the Business Intelligence systems. The aim of the article is to indicate, how the service enterprises of the creative industries in Poland assure the business continuity with the use of the BI systems’ environment.

Today, international strategic alliances in the field of air transportation represent a progressive form of business integration that allows top management to implement a global strategy for the development of the industry. The result of the study is a developed by the authors’ mechanism for creating an effective international strategic alliance, which includes a set of analytical procedures for assessing the key success factors, risks and synergistic financial effect of airline participation in the Alliance. The algorithm of formation includes the following stages: analysis of the current state of business and identification of the strengths and potential capabilities of the alliance from the perspective of strategic development; development of the alliance strategy; formation of the optimal structure of the alliance for the implementation of the strategy; evaluation of the effectiveness of airline participation in the Alliance.

Despite their novelty, cryptocurrencies have by now acquired certain popularity due to convenience in making payments, high speed of transactions and the application of modern technology to ensure transaction security among other things. The aim of this research is to evaluate cryptocurrencies as an investment instrument. The tasks of the research are as follows: (i) to evaluate a hypothesis about potential profitability of the cryptocurrency investment portfolio, (ii) to analyse cryptocurrency investment profitability, (iii) to assess the attractiveness of creating an investment portfolio of cryptocurrencies, and (iv) to provide recommendations to a potential investor for creating an investment portfolio comprised of cryptocurrencies. The research methods used include statistical data analysis and econometric modelling. Applied results were obtained using correlation-covariance analysis yielding a balanced profitable investment portfolio according to the Markowitz model. The results of the research have allowed the authors to conclude that cryptocurrencies would be an attractive investment instrument; the following indicators can be used to assess the attractiveness of cryptocurrency: market capitalization, the objectives of currency creators (issuing tokens on different resources to currency holders, bounty programs, etc.), trend assessment, and the analysis of reproducibility and replicability of the platform on which the cryptocurrency is built.

Issues of liquidity and profitability management are currently highly topical for every commercial bank. Those banks, which operate with surplus liquidity, encounter the problem of profits that are less than optimal. Other banks, which conduct aggressive policy aiming to place all the available resources with maximum efficiency, are forced to seek solutions to the problem of locating additional liquid funds, in order to ensure timely fulfilment of liabilities. In this paper the author offers a methodology for evaluating the optimization of the balance between profitability and liquidity in commercial banks. This methodology is based on the analysis of bank’s active and passive operations, which results in determining the amount of effective (profitable) resources, which is compared with the actual amount of profitable assets to discover the level of optimization of profitability and liquidity. The potential application and viability of the offered methodology is shown on the example of Latvian commercial banks. After analysing active and passive operations of Latvian commercial banks, the author develops recommendations to optimise profitability and liquidity.

Sales turnovers, profits, hence taxes collected from businesses operating in digital economy are rising worldwide, including the EU. This arises additional challenges for different tax administrations on how to tax profits of such businesses as their operational models no longer fit in traditional taxation models. Consequently, the question is how to attribute fair amount of profits of such businesses to respective jurisdictions.This is due the fact that businesses operating in digital economy have critical differences in their business models compared to the ones operating in traditional economy as further discussed in the research paper. Changing business models outline the need for new principles for taxation of such businesses to achieve fair taxation as recently pointed out by the European Commission.Different businesses are operating in digital economy, such as, ride-to-hire companies, e-commerce retailers and social networks etc. This research paper focuses specifically on corporate income taxation of e-commerce platforms. The research paper in more detail outlines the methodology used to determine key profit drivers of e-commerce platforms. It should be specifically stressed that from upstream sources as per traditional business models, e-commerce platforms have changed its operations to downstream sources—i.e. customers. Subsequently, as finding suggested that the most appropriate method for determination of profits to be taxed by each jurisdiction is profit split method, application of the method was simulated. Similar ideas and approaches on how to tackle issues arising from corporate income taxation on businesses operating in digital economy also are supported by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development member states as well as researches.

Providing quality higher education is a central goal related to the creation of the European Higher Education Area. Cost Action CA15221—Advancing effective institutional models towards cohesive teaching, learning, research and writing development—addresses the challenge of creating synergy among the increasingly more specialised and centralised supports for the above activities, offering the most advantageous models and practices for supporting teaching, learning, writing and research (TLWR).The aim of the paper is to investigate basic elements of integrated support for TLWR in a higher education institution. To achieve the above aim the following objectives were set by the authors: (1) studying the forms and methods of centralized support for research, writing, teaching and learning, which can be used in a modern university; (2) examining what educational services, designed to facilitate effective teaching, learning, and research, are offered to students, academic and attending staff; (3) defining basic processes and knowledge transfer schemes involved in the centralized model of support for research, writing, teaching and learning employed in a contemporary higher education institution; (4) analysing how modern technologies and communication platforms allow for greater collaboration between all study process participants in the agenda of creating the common ground in terms of shared purposes, processes, knowledge, values and skills among centralized institutional supports for the four key activities in order to capitalise on their synergies.The following research methods were used by the authors: (1) analysis of technologies and communication platforms used for supporting teaching, learning, research and writing (TLWR); (2) analysis of the main documents regulating centralized support for TLWR strategic plans, documents related to quality assurance in higher education, relevant publications, and study courses descriptions; (3) interviews with representatives of the management, research and academic staff of the university in focus.

Modern higher educational institutions (HEIs) offer exciting, creative programs for thousands of students worldwide. The higher education industry is designated by development in creativity, training and employability for qualifications and degrees. Without using competitive marketing strategies, student enlistment numbers often fight to meet and surpass expectations. That is the reason advanced education organizations are employing creative marketing experts to maintain their foundations and studies stand-out and attractive. Universities are moving past such traditional methods as magazines and leaflets; they are rather pushing assets towards speaking to the always developing computerized advertising scene. There, they can have more extensive reach and more noteworthy potential in quickly expanding their program’s comprehension. There’s some specific challenges higher education marketers face today, for instance, limited marketing resources, media overloading, image based on previous information, etc. Moreover, every year university applicants start a new lifecycle. Consequently, higher education market experts have to face a new target audience. That is why it is important to define the latest marketing strategies and trends, while re-evaluating the foundations to ensure the university sends the right message to the right audience. In order to create a competitive market position for a higher education institution in such circumstances it is necessary that it adopts marketing concept and philosophy and creates its strategy and activities in terms of market performance. The aim of the paper is to examine some marketing strategies to be applied in a higher education institution in the agenda of customer-driven education. The following objectives were set by the authors: (1) to identify modern trends and challenges in the higher education industry in the context of developing an efficient marketing strategy; (2) to discuss some marketing strategies to be used in a contemporary university in the agenda of customer-driven education. The following research methods were used by the authors: (1) review of theoretical literature and EU documents on the research topic; (2) analysis of the open-source marketing reports of some universities.

Implementation of e-learning practices requires from teachers not only digital skills, but also motivation to work in e-environment. The overwhelming goal of the planned large-scale research is to determine e-teaching value perceived by the academic staff members representing higher education institutions in Latvia and other countries. The goal of the current paper is to reflect the results of the authors’ conducted pilot survey, using the authors’ developed questionnaire. The authors focused on the factors affecting e-teaching effectiveness, perceived by the academic staff members. 38 academic staff members representing the University College of Economics and Culture participated in the survey. The respondents were offered to evaluate nine pre-determined factors according to their perceived importance. Data has been processed in SPSS 24.0 environment with application of Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) analysis. The analysis revealed that the most important characteristics that has an influence on respondents’ perception of factors effecting e-teaching effectiveness was educational background. On the opinion of the most respondents, the factor contributing to effective e-teaching is a regular training in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Management games are a common method for training employees in production and logistics, both in expert knowledge and in soft skills. Typically, all participants are located in one room while playing the game, which allows for a face-to-face interaction among the participants and between the participants and the trainer. This facilitates the typical learning loop of a management game: play, analyze and improve. For companies with supply chains covering faraway geographical locations and different time zones, the approach of having a management game seminar with all relevant participants (actors from different locations of the supply chain) in one room leads to high costs due to traveling and lost time for traveling. Multiplayer computer games played through the Internet could enable companies to conduct management games with actors of geographically distributed supply chains without spending money and time on travelling. The paper conceptually compares board games, multiplayer computer games played distributed over the internet and multiplayer VR games. Furthermore, the paper describes a prototype implementation of a computer game on supply chain management suitable for actors of a geographically distributed supply chain.

In recent years, Russia has carried out reforms in the vocational education system. In order to improve the reforms efficiency leading engineering universities of the country are organising Competence centres. In technical universities this tendency is actually to provide training for teachers, professors, experts in hi-tech industries. The article considers the main functions of competence centers as structures aimed at active search, transfer and accumulation of new knowledge and unique experience, based on the students and employers needs. It is suggested to apply process approach for university centres design, while in the framework of this approach it is possible to optimize the acquisition, storage, and knowledge management process.

This article is devoted to the management of the conflicts between academic staff and students. The progress of the whole pedagogical process will largely depend on the preventation, regulation and resolution of the conflict faculty-students. In order to improve conflict management system in high school, the authors of the article conducted an empirical study of this type of conflict interaction. The aim of this study was to investigate the causes that gave rise to the conflicts and the positions of the conflicting parties, as well as to identify the problems underlying the emergence of disagreements. The study involved the lecturers and students of the Transport and Telecommunication Institute. The main methods of collecting information were questionnaire survey with closed and semi-closed questions (for students) and interviewing (for faculty). Based on the received data, the measures for managing the conflict between faculty and students are proposed. The findings of this article should be useful for academic and administrative staff of the university.

The Helix innovation model has been in development for over 20 years and has gone through several development stages, from the Triple Helix innovation model at the beginning of the nineties, the Quadruple Helix innovation model, and then to the Quintuple Helix model as a driver for innovation in several fields of development. The author of this article analyses the usage of the Helix models for the development of innovative services in one project in Latvia, where the successful cooperation between two universities from Latvia and Lithuania, a small innovative enterprise, local and national media, a municipal organization, and a professional non-governmental organization, brought about excellent results. The article, analyses the main methods of cooperation for the creation of innovation products and the education of society in order to use the created electronic services developed for the inhabitants of a regional town in Latvia. The author describes the main roles of the partners in the project and the communication between the partners, the methods used for communication, and highlights the points of societal education and the involvement of all parties in this process. As the results of this project were being finalized, recommendations were made for cooperation between municipal and commercial enterprises. Together, with the participation of universities, non-governmental organizations and the mass media, the development of services would be an important process for the rural regions of Latvia, to become more active in the knowledge base and in the development of the smart economy. Each of the partner organizations had a specific role in the project, and a positive influence on the successful result of the project and of the benefits to everyone, and society in general.