People
doc. Ing. Tomáš Horák, Ph.D.

2023, 2023 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 979-8-3503-2162-3, ISSN 2691-3666

The critical role of blockchain technology has been highlighted in decarbonization and logistics transitions in the literature. Blockchain technology combined with the Smart City paradigm is identified as one of the most important digital technology disruptions and trends of sustainable urban logistics in the future. Unfortunately, none of the current strategic assessment models can evaluate the impact of blockchain technology adoption on the decarbonization pathways in urban logistics. In this study, to assess the impact of blockchain technology adoption on decarbonization goals in urban logistics, we review the literature for the current strategic assessment tools/models, sustainable urban logistics, Smart City paradigm, and blockchain technology application in logistics and decarbonization. We propose a combination of different modelling approaches including the living lab, agent-based models, and specific decision-making algorithms of blockchain technology adoptions in urban logistics and Smart City paradigms to fill the identified gaps in the literature. The main contribution of this study is to identify the research gaps in the analysis of the impact of blockchain on decarbonization in urban logistics.

2023, 2023 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 979-8-3503-2162-3, ISSN 2691-3666

This paper explores the future of intersections with a novel approach to traffic control and management. Our research delves into the concept of Smart Intersections, introducing their levels of increasing "smartness," and their potential impact on traffic flow and safety. From static control to advanced data collection and I2X communication, our findings offer a glimpse into a future where intersections are a key player in urban mobility. The benefits of implementing Smart Intersections include improved traffic flow, reduced congestion, increased safety, and more efficient use of resources. Our research highlights the potential for Smart Intersections to improve public transportation through bus and train prioritization at intersections. Building off this, Smart Intersections could also inform individual actors in advance and communicate the current status of traffic as well as gather additional data. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of Smart Intersections, from their current state to the highest level of smartness, and the steps necessary to make this technology a reality in a real-life example. It also explores alternative possibilities, such as multi-agent systems, and their possible application in Smart Intersections.

2022, 2022 Smart City Symposium Prague (SCSP), Vienna, IEEE Industrial Electronic Society), ISBN 978-1-6654-7923-3, ISSN 2691-3666

This review paper gives a brief introduction to Smart City Logistics and uses different sources to ultimately present recommendations for Prague city to achieve better solutions in the area. With large numbers of people expected to move to cities in the coming thirty years, smart logistics will become even more important than it is today. Four different projects from three different cities in Europe are described, ITSLOG and SAILOR projects from Amsterdam, SmartPort from Hamburg and the Dachser project from Stuttgart. The benefits and learnings from these projects are presented with an additional SWOT-analysis which presents the opportunities and threats that could come with similar implementations in Prague. Recommendations based on the findings regarding smart loading zones, micro-hubs, and virtual depots and how they could be implemented in Prague are made. It turns out that their implementation could give several benefits for Prague and help the city become more smart, both in terms of logistics, but also in other ways.

2021, 2021 Smart Cities Symposium Prague (SCSP), New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-0-7381-3158-0

This paper discusses how Smart Logistics could be linked with the Smart Border concept earlier proposed for the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez bi-national metropolitan area. The focus is on the international road and pedestrian bridges connecting these two cities as these were identified as bottlenecks for cross-border movement of goods and cross-border mobility of people. The proposal presents the basic strategic and operative framework. Examples of smart logistics measures that could be implemented on the border and beyond the border such as autonomous vehicles, micro depots and crowd shipping are presented and discussed. The paper shall be understood as the case for the cross-border logistics in relation to the Smart Border concept and as the starting point for further exploration.

2020, 2020 Smart City Symposium Prague (SCSP), Vienna, IEEE Industrial Electronic Society), ISBN 978-1-7281-6821-0

El Paso – Ciudad Juarez bi-national metropolitan area is the largest cross-border metropolitan area in the United States and Mexico with combined population of over 2.4 million people. The cross-border mobility currently relies on international road bridges that serve as points of entry to the Unites States. The bridges are not equipped with any advanced smart equipment. This paper presents an entry-level survey on cross-border mobility conducted among students of The University of Texas at El Paso. The aim of the survey was to identify reasons for cross-border mobility, perception of the existing border crossing system and finally perception of the proposed improved border crossing system relying on smart border concept and smart technologies.

2020, 2020 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-7281-6821-0

One of the today's challenges for cities with smart projects is to demonstrate benefits of deployed solutions for city effectiveness and for the Quality of Living (QoL) of their citizens. Research objective of the paper is to explore citizen individual perception to gain knowledge about smart solutions impacts on quality of living perception. Research was conducted within project Smart Region - Smart City - Smart Community. Authors in first part of this paper provide analysis of citizens' idea of Smart City strategies and solutions. In the second part, relationship between perceived level of smartness and the level of QoL in Czech cities is examined and analysed. The third part of this paper presents citizens' ranking of the top Czech smart cities and Czech regions. Citizen-centric approach and QoL in the SC is authors' constant focus on how to complement the issue with the human element, how to promote communication towards citizens and support the tools of citizen involvement and thus support democracy.

2020, 2020 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-7281-6821-0

The paper presents the comparative assessment of urban heat vulnerability for El Paso, USA and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico as a part of smart resilient city index. First, the heat vulnerability framework is presented. Based on available data the urban heat vulnerability index for the both cities are calculated. The results of analyse are discussed as an illustrative example of smart border concept.

2019, 2019 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-7281-0497-3

One of the main goals of the Smart City concept is to ensure a high quality of living (QoL). It is known as a strongly subjective indicator of individuals and depends on many factors which differ among environments. However, todays measurement of QoL takes the form of a comparison of sets of indicators based on hard data or does not occur in cities at all. That may cause that the city ranked as „the smartest“ will not really know anything about the satisfaction of its citizens. But thanks to the modern technology offered by the Smart City concept, we should be able to eliminate this insufficiency and include individual perception into the smart city's management as an integral part of it. In this article, a team of authors are exploring existing citizen surveys focused on individual perceptions of Smart City strategies and quality of living. The second part of the article presents a summary of current rankings of Smart Cities and levels of QoL. The outcome of the second part is a definition of the TOP Smart Cities in the World, based on calculations of the presented ranking.

2019, Journal of Air Transport Management, 75, p. 27-38), ISSN 0969-6997

Air travelers can carry an infectious disease's pathogenic microorganism in their bodies and spread the disease from one country to another in a few days. To delay the spread, health screening stations may be set up at airport terminals to screen travelers. This research tested three different health screening strategies, each with a different combination of screening stations at trip origins, destinations and connecting airports. Discrete event simulations were performed, based on the 2014 to 2016 Ebola virus epidemic, with special focus on travelers from the West African countries traveling to the United States, including travelers who transferred flights at airports in European Union member states. The effectiveness of the screening strategies was analyzed in terms of correct detection, missed detection and false alarm rate. The results showed that exit screening at trip origins brought big improvements in the performance measurements compared to no screening. However, additional screening at the destinations and connecting airports contributed marginal benefits.

2019, 2019 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-7281-0497-3

Each city has its distinctive features that need to be considered when designing a smart concept. Typically, these features include geography, climate or historical development. This paper shows the example of El Paso – Ciudad Juárez bi-national metropolitan area divided by an artificial (administrative) boundary, in this case national border, yet there is a significant mobility of people and goods between these two cities. System approach is applied on the border itself and the surrounding boundary area. The boundary functions are defined followed by a case study of the El Paso – Ciudad Juárez bi-national metropolitan area with focus on cross border road bridges and rail infrastructure. A high-level smart border concept is outlined including a smart border crossing system.

2019, 2019 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-7281-0497-3

El Paso, TX, USA and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico form the largest bi-national metropolitan area in the United States and Mexico. Currently, both cities rely on separate public transit bus networks that are not linked and the only cross-border connection is available through three major international bridges opened for cars and pedestrian traffic. In 2017, the City of El Paso adopted the Resilience Strategic Plan to make El Paso smarter. The plan proposes among others the development of Rapid Transit System Corridors in El Paso. This paper presents a high-level proposal how a passenger rail system could be used to complement the existing and future Bus Rapid Transit system as well as local circulator bus system. The proposed rail network is intended for passenger transportation in El Paso, but also beyond into the surrounding region including a cross-border link to Ciudad Juárez, without which the network cannot be considered complete.

2018, 2018 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-5386-5017-2

Preparing the next generation of engineers, scientists and decision makers requires the development of new teaching strategies that follow smart cities philosophy: collaborative, inclusive and focused on specific needs of the region. The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), USA and University of Guadalajara (UdeG), Mexico, addressed the challenge of creating a new international course on smart cities study abroad program that leverages the long-term relationship of UTEP with Czech Technical University (CTU), Czech Republic, and industry partners in El Paso and Guadalajara, especially IBM Mexico. This program is highly interdisciplinary, involving four departments in the College of Engineering at UTEP and the Department of Information Systems, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Economico Administrativas at UdeG. Input from city officials in Guadalajara and El Paso along with industry partners was key in designing this novel program. Thirty-two students from UTEP and 32 from UdeG have successfully completed this program which will launch again on its third edition this year. The program included problem-based learning strategies as well as cultural, industry-led activities, culminating in a Smart Cities Hackathon competition. This articles reports on the planning, development and results of this study abroad program, challenges and lessons learned.

2018, 2018 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-5386-5017-2

In January 2018, Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) and The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly develop and implement a Dual Master Degrees program in Smart Cities. Since then, the program structure has been decided, and the management team hopes to start the program with the first cohort of students in August 2018. In this paper, the authors, who are the key leaders in the development of this program, share the history, program structure, enabling teaching facilities, and challenges with the readers.

2018, 2018 Smart City Symposium Prague, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-5386-5017-2

The topic of Smart Cities is nowadays very broadly discussed. In order to be able to move beyond theory and make some practical progress, the concept of building blocks shall be adopted. In this paper, we address one particular building block - Smart Campus - and try to understand its key features. University is typically a part of most big cities and forms a unique environment. Smart city theory clearly states that improving the quality of life of particular citizens shall be the main objective. Even though a university has also different stakeholders, students form a homogenous group with often common objectives. The objective of this paper is to propose a method to learn about student preferences and perception of different smart cities with respect to university campuses. For this reason, design of a survey which can be used by different universities to learn about the expectations of the end users - students - with respect to the smart concept is presented and discussed. Additionally, results of two pilot evaluations are presented. On purpose, two universities with rather different background and different cultural background were selected: Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic) and Thammasat University in Thailand. A pilot survey was executed and the analysis of the results using basic econometric methods, inferential statistics and logistic regression is provided.

2017, 2017 Smart Cities Symposium Prague (SCSP) - IEEE PROCEEDINGS, New York, IEEE Press), ISBN 978-1-5386-3825-5

The outputs of many large EU research projects that are aimed at improving life in cities and that of their residents, such as those funded under the Horizon 2020 programme, are often delivered by technology-oriented partners or research institutions that, although they are often a part of a heterogeneous consortia, may not be aware of the real-life dimension of the problem they are solving. This could be particularly troublesome in case a holistic solution should be delivered and is especially valid in case of Smart Cities related problems. In this paper we are proposing a methodology to overcome this issue while using the example of a real Horizon 2020 project MAVEN – Managing Automated Vehicles Enhances Network. The methodology is based on the system engineering approach and its application is illustrated on the first MAVEN stakeholder consultation workshop including its evaluation using the online tool Mentimeter. The proposed template can be used in other EU projects.

2017, TRANSCOM 2017, 12th International Scientific Conference Of Young Scientists On Sustainable, Modern and Safe Transport, Linz, Elsevier BV), p. 336-341), ISSN 1877-7058

In this paper, a pragmatic and goal oriented system for risk analysis in road tunnels is described. It is particularly focusing on mortality risks in case of a road tunnel accident. It is a deterministic approach combining three major components: a) vehicle distribution in a tunnel; b) smoke propagation in case of a fire; and c) people evacuation (escape) component. The major improvement of this approach is in capturing the knowledge often provided only by experts into a robust and pragmatic system available to all decision makers. This is achieved through a large number of scenarios combining different configurations of road tunnels (e.g. different number of lanes, different speed limits) and the travel demand (e.g. different structure of the flow, different volumes of traffic) which were prepared and evaluated through microscopic traffic simulation. The resulting scenarios with the information about the number of vehicles in different tunnel sections were obtained. The results describe most of the existing tunnels and situations and can be used universally. Similarly, the people evacuation component can be evaluated in a general form. The results can be manually updated to suit any particular road tunnel which can differ for example by the availability or quality of warning and information systems. The remaining task is to create a physical model of the real tunnel and to model the smoke and fire propagation. All these components were combined into the CAPITA software that was developed as a part of the research project HADES (supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic). The CAPITA software is presented in the last chapter of this paper. The scenarios available off-line are in fact a knowledge base available to experts as well as decision makers and lead to a higher level of comprehension of the developments in case of fire and significantly speed up preparation of a risk analysis.