Speed reduction on through roads in Nordrhein-Westfalen.

The paper describes a program of experiments for speed reduction on 28 through roads in Nordrhein-Westfalen. In the process, different measures of construction, design, and traffic control were examined to determine their usefulness to reduce speed and to improve road safety. The need for systematic evaluation of a catalogue of measures partly resulted in unsatisfactory design conceptions for the through roads. The evaluation of the effects of the program has been carried out by use of before-and-after-studies of large extent. The speed measurements show that a distinct speed reduction can be obtained only from selected physical improvements. Measures based on optical effects and traffic signs were found to have very little effect on vehicle speeds. Furthermore, in light of the relatively small number of accidents that occur on the selected facilities, it was not possible to establish the beneficial impact of each specific control measure with statistical certainty. However, the results of the experiment have had an influence on the current definition of new design standards for main urban streets in Germany.     

Khartoum

Khartoum is the capital of a country whose creation resulted more from colonial politicians' desires for straight boundaries than from local social or political realities. This profile traces Khartoum's history of growth and planning legislation since its establishment as an administrative capital at the turn of the century. The city, developed from three separate towns, grew rapidly after independence as administrative functions grew and industrial development started. However, lack of an effective mechanism for planning and control of the city's growth has meant that a pattern of sprawling low-density land uses has developed, with inadequate services and deteriorating environmental standards. What planning control does exist operates through land-use zoning and building byelaws, though often arbitrarily applied. Planning problems are exacerbated by high population growth rates and national economic problems.     

Cross-Border Migration of Hong Kong Residents Under the 'One Country, Two Systems' Policy

Hong Kong is known as a migrant city because its population was sourced from mainland China, and because there has always been outflows of people to overseas countries, especially from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Emigration to mainland China has become a significant recent trend. This article discusses this phenomenon in the theoretical contexts of migration and trans-border residential development. It contends that the trend will intensify more quickly than other cross-border movements because the two systems are separated by a political border within one country, and because there are common cultural ties and rapid economic integration.     

Informing consumer decisions in health care: implications from decision-making research

Despite the wider dissemination of health plan report cards, little is known about whether consumers will use this information in making plan and provider choices. Studies of human judgment and decision making are reviewed, as are their implications for devising strategies to inform consumers. The limitations of human information processing suggest that many consumers will not use performance information in making choices. Strategies are needed to support consumers who prefer to rely on intermediaries as well as those who wish to apply the information for their own use. Many current strategies are based on assumptions not supported by existing decision-making research. Although there is much to learn about assisting consumers in making informed choices, a great deal is known from decision-making research. Our approaches and our research agenda must be based on this existing foundation of knowledge.     

Value-based transmission planning and the effects of network models

A value-based automated transmission system planning model is presented in this paper and the impact of the various network representations on the results of the model is discussed. Value-based integrated resource planning provides a “societal cost” (utility operation and investment costs plus customer outage costs) minimizing composite generation-transmission system expansion plan. The model trades-off and compares the costs and benefits of alternative generation and transmission resources using a consistent economic and engineering criterion in order to determine an “optimal” resource expansion plan. The generalized Benders decomposition algorithm with “importance sampling” used to solve the problem enables the model to estimate certain average information about scenarios or contingencies by examining only a very small fraction of all the scenarios or contingencies. The impacts of system resources upon both real and reactive power can be analyzed when using the AC power flow equations. It is concluded that for transmission system planning where reactive power flows and voltage constraints are important, it is imperative that an AC power flow model be used. The combination of AC power flow and linearized power flow models, with linearization about the solution of the AC power flow model, was found to be a promising compromise between accuracy and computation time