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In recent years, the route-planning problem has gained increased interest due to the development of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) and increasing traffic congestion especially in urban areas. An independent route-planning strategy for each in-vehicle terminal improves its individual travel efficiency. However, individual optimal routes pursue the maximization of individual benefit and may contradict the global benefit, thereby reducing the overall transport efficiency of the road network. To improve traffic efficiency while considering the travel time of individual vehicles, we propose a new dynamic route-planning method by innovatively introducing a bidding mechanism in the connected vehicle scenario for the first time. First, a novel bidding-based dynamic route planning is proposed to formulate vehicle routing schemes for vehicles affected by congestion via the bidding process. Correspondingly, a bidding price incorporating individual and global travel times was designed to balance the travel benefits of both objectives. Then, in the bidding process, a new local search algorithm was designed to select the winning routing scheme set with the minimum bidding price. Finally, the proposed method was tested and validated through case studies of simulated and actual driving scenarios to demonstrate that the bidding mechanism would be conducive to improving the transport efficiency of road networks in large-scale traffic flow scenarios. This study positively contributes to the research and development of traffic management in ITSs.

This book reviews the major developments in and the lessons learned from the 21-year (1991-2012) experience with private sector participation (PSP) in the power sector in India. It discusses the political economy context of the policy changes, looks at reform initiatives that were implemented for the generation sector, describes transmission and distribution segments at different points in the evolution of the sector, and concludes with a summary of lessons learned and a suggested way forward. The evolution of private participation in the Indian power sector can be divided into different phases. Phase one was launched with the opening of the generation sector to private investment in 1991. Phase two soon followed - early experiments with state-level unbundling and other reform initiatives, including regulatory reform, culminating in divestiture, and privatization in Orissa and Delhi respectively. Phase three, the passage of the electricity act of 2003 by the central government, followed by a large increase in private entry into generation and forays into transmission and experiments with distribution franchise models in urban and rural areas during the 11th five-year plan (2007-12) period. In phase four, at the start of the 12th five-year plan (2012-17), the sector is seeing a sharp reduction in bid euphoria and greater risk aversion on the part of bidders, who are concerned about access to basic inputs such as fuel and land. In this context, the report is structured as follows: chapter one gives introduction; chapter two presents private sector participation in thermal generation; chapter three presents private sector participation in transmission; chapter four deals with private sector participation in distribution; chapter five deals with private sector participation in the Indian solar energy sector; chapter six deals with financing of the power sector; chapter seven presents emerging issues and proposed approaches for the Indian power sector; and chapter eight give updates.

This report assesses the potential of electricity contract auctions as a procurement option for the World Bank's client countries. It focuses on the role of auctions of electricity contracts designed to expand and retain existing generation capacity. It is not meant to be a 'how-to' manual. Rather, it highlights some major issues and options that need to be taken into account when a country considers moving towards competitive electricity procurement through the introduction of electricity auctions. Auctions have played an important role in the effort to match supply and demand. Ever since the 1990s, the use of long-term contract auctions to procure new generation capacity, notably from private sector suppliers, has garnered increased affection from investors, governments, and multilateral agencies in general, as a means to achieve a competitive and transparent procurement process while providing certainty of supply for the medium to long term. However, the liberalization of electricity markets and the move from single-buyer procurement models increased the nature of the challenge facing system planners in their efforts to ensure an adequate and secure supply of electricity in the future at the best price. While auctions as general propositions are a means to match supply with demand in a cost-effective manner, they can also be and have been used to meet a variety of goals.

In online auction research, sellers' and buyers' strategies have been largely examined as separate research streams and their interdependencies have not been adequately explored. This deficiency is a serious limitation since an integrative approach could build the conceptual bridge necessary to provide sellers and buyers with a deeper understanding of how to achieve desired auction outcomes. Consequently, the present study integrates these two perspectives by proposing that the seller's auction duration strategy impacts the effectiveness of bidders' strategies in the forms of both winning likelihood and surplus extraction. We drew upon the concept of bidders' time costs and information asymmetry to build our hypotheses. Field data collected from eBay supported our model and demonstrated significant differences in bidders' winning likelihood and surpluses across auctions with shorter and longer durations. The results suggested that online bidders should pay closer attention to auction duration since it can affect their surpluses and odds of winning. For instance, opportunists or last-minute bidders can improve their odds of winning significantly if they choose to participate in seven-day auctions rather than in one-day auctions.