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This study presents a remote sensing-based index for the prediction of soil erosion susceptibility within railway corridors. The empirically derived index, Normalized Difference Railway Erosivity Index (NDReLI), is based on the Landsat-8 SWIR spectral reflectances and takes into account the bare soil and vegetation reflectances especially in semi-arid environments. For the case study of the Botswana Railway Corridor (BRC), the NDReLI results are compared with the RUSLE and the Soil Degradation Index (SDI). The RUSLE model showed that within the BRC, the mean annual soil loss index was at 0.139 ton ha−1 year−1, and only about 1% of the corridor area is susceptible to high (1.423–3.053 ton ha−1 year−1) and very high (3.053–5.854 ton ha−1 year−1) soil loss, while SDI estimated 19.4% of the railway corridor as vulnerable to soil degradation. NDReLI results based on SWIR1 (1.57–1.65 μm) predicted the most vulnerable areas, with a very high erosivity index (0.36–0.95), while SWIR2 (2.11–2.29 μm) predicted the same regions at a high erosivity index (0.13–0.36). From empirical validation using previous soil erosion events within the BRC, the proposed NDReLI performed better than the RUSLE and SDI models in the prediction of the spatial locations and extents of susceptibility to soil erosion within the BRC.

This article evaluates the potential for integrating planned water transfer infrastructure with existing transport corridors. A novel method was developed to assess the suitability of major road, highway, and railway corridors based on the availability of adjacent state-owned land for water pipeline construction. A five-category classification was introduced, reflecting the ratio of available land area (m2) to corridor segment length (m). This approach was first applied across the whole Czech Republic and then tested in detail on a regional pilot case study involving a planned water pipeline from the Nýrsko reservoir to the city of Plzeň with a total length of 72 km, supplying 250,000 inhabitants. Results showed a promising share of highly suitable corridors (23.6% nationwide; 20.6% in the case study). The method offers a tool for cost-effective planning of water transfer systems and can help to minimize land acquisition costs by utilizing state land along transport infrastructure. It is transferable and replicable for similar applications in other regions.

Transport and mobility in cities are important factors in the sustainability of the urbanized world. This article investigates one type of intra-urban transport: railway transport and the surrounding areas along the railway, i.e., whether railway corridors can be a factor in the sustainable development of cities in the 21st century. The aim of the article is to determine specific characteristics of railway corridors and identify problems and cultural-historical specifics related to the industrial cultural heritage of the railway. The article examines the importance of an integrated approach to the planning of railway corridors and emphasizes the importance of multicriteria analyses in the decision-making process for corridor areas. As a case study, the city of Osijek is selected because in the past the railway strongly influenced its economical and urban development. Concretization and specification methods applied to the city of Osijek prove that railway corridors can become factors of the sustainable development of cities. The article proves that railway corridors have the potential to transform sustainable urban development because they pass through central, often historical, city areas, they occupy large surfaces and have a long linear spatial continuity. The scientific contribution of the article is the identification and systematization of the contribution of the transformation of railway corridors to the sustainable development of cities.

InSAR technology is currently a crucial tool for large-scale surface deformation monitoring, particularly excelling in regional subsidence monitoring. In this study, focusing on the Jinan section of the Shandong railway, newly launched LUTAN-1 satellite SAR data was employed. DInSAR and Stacking techniques were applied to analyze the subsidence in response to the long-term operation load of high-speed trains and surrounding human activities. Through the analysis of data from June 2023 to December 2023, regional subsidence was identified in this section, with a subsidence rate reaching 8 cm/year. Comparative analysis between DInSAR technology monitoring results and precise leveling monitoring results showed consistency in the subsidence deformation trend in the region, achieving centimeter-level deformation monitoring in the study area.The LuTan-1 satellite provided robust SAR data support for railway subsidence monitoring, offering substantial reliability and accuracy to deepen the understanding of railway subsidence issues. These research findings hold significant practical implications for adopting timely maintenance and repair measures, ensuring the safety and reliable operation of the railway system.

BackgroundAccording to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) the Southern African railway network extends homogenously through 1067mm cape gauge across 12 of the 15 SADC nations. Nonetheless, the network is constrained from efficient and effective operation due to insufficient investment in maintaining and upgrading affected tracks and equipment apart from inadequate human capital. This article presents the case of regulation as a plausible solution.ObjectivesTo advocate for railway economic regulation as a means for enabling investment in SADC regional railway corridors.MethodLiterature review on global best practices on regulation that induces transport and infrastructure sector investment, and a market research study on railway corridor investment policy assertions and Economic Regulation of the Regional Railway Corridor for Investment.ResultsCurrent SADC regional railway corridor markets do not encourage steady or sustainable investments and there is a need for further exploration on more investment subsidies and crowding-in on intergovernmental agreements for pertinent development.ConclusionAttracting investments into a railway corridor market is an aspect of economic regulation, which necessitates the establishment of market confidence, predictability, and transparency, as observed in Brazil. The legislative provisions, market access codes, and incentives as implemented in the USA, Europe, Australia, and Japan are also crucial investment inducement.ContributionThe articles presents a profound approach to regional railway corridor investments consideration as it puts to questions the current practice of isolated sovereign attempts. It advocates for joint intergovernmental effort for sustainable and competitive regional railway corridor investments.

Landslides frequently occur along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, which poses a risk to the construction, maintenance, and transportation of the proposed Dujiangyan city to Siguniang Mountain (DS) railway, China. Therefore, four advanced machine learning models, namely, the Bayesian network (BN), decision table (DTable), radial basis function network (RBFN), and stochastic gradient descent (SGD), are proposed in this study to delineate landslide susceptibility zones. First, a landslide inventory map was randomly divided into 828 (75%) samples and 276 (25%) samples for training and validation, respectively. Second, the One-R technique was utilized to analyze the importance of 14 variables. Then, the prediction capability of the four models was validated and compared in terms of different statistical indices (accuracy (ACC) and Cohen’s kappa coefficient (k)) and the areas under the curve (AUC) in the receiver operating characteristic curve. The results showed that the SGD model performed best (AUC = 0.897, ACC = 80.98%, and k = 0.62), followed by the BN (AUC = 0.863, ACC = 78.80%, and k = 0.58), RBFN (AUC = 0.846, ACC = 77.36%, and k = 0.55), and DTable (AUC = 0.843, ACC = 76.45%, and k = 0.53) models. The susceptibility maps revealed that the DS railway segments from Puyang town to Dengsheng village are in high and very high-susceptibility zones.

Background: Economic regulation involves provision of rules, systems or alteration of the allocation of resources and/or distribution of income in a manner preferred to that which could have occurred in the absence of such upheld regulations. As railway transportation continues to be recognised as an essential contributor to the economic development of many economies, because of its comparative advantage in surface transportation of bulk and heavy cargo, the competition from the road trucking and its market dominance stands as an increasing threat. Objective: This article recommends economic factors that can be assessed for significance as variables for inclusion into a regional railway corridor transportation economic regulatory framework for enhancing competitiveness of rail operations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) using the case of the North-South Corridor (NSC). Method: An appraisal of economic theories and global practices are the basis used for recommending the economic factors. The different forms of corridor freight competition, the importance of property rights within the context of roles and responsibilities of railway corridor stakeholders, and the parameters determining the level of freight service are also appraised in arriving at the recommended variables. Results: Identified variables are: corridor governance; commercial obligations of corridor parties; corridor rail service design; countering existent forms of corridor competition; and property rights allocation. Conclusion: It is concluded that appropriate optimisation of the determined variables will enhance railway corridor economic efcfiiency and facilitate for the measurement of railway corridor economic competitiveness by attracting investment, pricing for freight services, predictability of operations, quality of freight service, safety and security, increasing freight market share and competition against road freight transportation.

Passenger demand for railway transportation rapidly increases in peak periods, and the transport capacity for existing trains is not sufficient. Railway companies usually adopt the strategy of adding additional trains in peak periods to meet the higher passenger demand. Designing a good operational plan for additional trains becomes a challenge for operators, though. A new optimization approach for designing an operational plan for additional trains is proposed in this paper. The number of trains, the operational plan, the stop plan, and the timetable for each train can be considered simultaneously in the new optimization approach, which will make it easier to design an operational plan for additional trains. A multi-objective nonlinear model with three objectives of minimizing total running distance, dwelling time, and unsatisfied passengers is proposed. Big-M is introduced to transform the nonlinear model into a linear model. The solver CPLEX is used to solve the transformed linear model and obtain the optimal operational plan. Small-scale numerical experiments are implemented to show the effectiveness of the optimization approach. The large-scale case of the Beijing‒Shanghai railway corridor is studied to demonstrate that the optimization approach can be applied to real-word and large-scale situations.

Quantifying rock fall hazards requires information about their frequency and volumes. Previous studies have focused on quantifying rock fall volume–frequency relationships or the weather conditions antecedent to rock fall occurrences, and their potential use as prediction tools. This paper is focused on quantifying rock fall occurrence probabilities and presents approaches for quantifying rock fall temporal distributions. In particular, von Mises distributions allow direct correlation between seasonal weather variations and rock fall occurrences. The approaches are illustrated using a rock fall database along a railway corridor in the Canadian Cordillera, in which rock fall occurrences were correlated to the morphology and lithology. A Binomial probability distribution applied to the annual rock fall frequency suggests an average daily rock fall probability of 1 × 10 −2 across the study area. However, circular (von Mises) distributions associated with weather trends in the area, and fitted to monthly rock fall records, allow estimation of daily rock fall probabilities in different months. This approach allows a direct correlation between rock fall frequencies and seasonal variations in weather conditions. The results suggest daily rock fall probabilities between 4 × 10 −3 and 8 × 10 −3 for April through July and up to 2.1 × 10 −2 in October. Moreover, local peaks in rock fall monthly records are quantitatively explained through the seasonality of weather conditions. Similar values are obtained when applying the Binomial distribution to monthly records. However, this last approach does not show strong distribution fits and does not allow a correlation between rock fall frequencies and seasonal weather variations.

Drawing on the example of Chris Watson's soundwork El tren fantasma, this paper considers how landscape is made in sound. Informed by the work of Michael Serres and Don Ihde, it argues for an understanding of landscape as mediation. Drawing on the work of Brandon LaBelle, Jean Luc Nancy, Mladen Dolar and Charles Sanders Pearce, the paper develops the concept of 'the arc of sound' as part of a socio-material approach to semiosis able to recognise the ways in which sound connects and differentiates contingently across heterogeneous spaces and materials. It shows how sound participates in the production of the railway corridor as a complex, animate and deeply contoured historically and geographically specific experience of landscape. Finally, it argues for an approach to landscape as mediation that pays equal attention to ontology and epistemology.