第二期国际地下物流简报主要内容如下：

ISUFT March 2012 Newsletter

Dear ISUFT Members,

This is the first newsletter of 2012 from ISUFT. It took a bit more time to write this newsletter than was planned.  As member of the civil engineering faculty of Delft University of Technology I am preparing a research program on underground freight transport. I get a lot of positive response from fellow researchers at the university and also from the Dutch organization BIG. I hope to get a budget to continue the research we started fifteen years ago. The big news in this newsletter is that ISUFT has a new board of directors! 

New Board of Directors

As promised in the second newsletter of 2011, we elected a new board of directors for ISUFT.  We welcome Stephen Catha (United States), Franco Cotana (Italy), Baosong Ma (China) and Hyeok-bin Kwon (Korea) as new directors of the board. Noel Hodson (United Kingdom), Qihu Qian (China) and Willy Winkelmans, (Belgium) are re-elected.  With Johan Visser and Prof Najafi as president and vice-president we have in total 9 members in the new ISUFT board. 

It is a bit much to have elections every year. We therefore want to change the election procedure. This means we have to adjust the bylaws of ISUFT.  We will take action for this when it is clear how we want to organize it in the future. With a new board of members we also need to appoint a new secretary-treasurer. Mrs. Roberts promised to help us with electing the new board but made clear that she is not in the position to continue to work for ISUFT.  We are very grateful for her support.  Dr. Najafi’s secretariat at CUIRE will help is with the administration of ISUFT. 

The environmental impact of container pipeline transport

Professor Johan Braet from The University of Antwerp wrote an article on the environmental impact of container pipeline transport. In his study professor Braet compared container pipeline transport to road transport for the Antwerp Harbor region.  The environmental impact of two alternative container transportation methods over a 25 year time period are compared for a specific trajectory and transport volume in the Antwerp harbor. One is a pipeline concept; the other a road concept to link the Deurganck dock with the right bank in order to transport 2 million containers per year. With a detailed bill of material and the use of the Ecolizer method, a Monte Carlo simulation was performed to calculate the environmental impact in terms of ECOPOINTS on a life cycle perspective. The results remark that in 94% of the cases the pipeline concept has less than half of the environmental impact of the road concept.  The pipeline concept results suggest a much lower total environmental impact over a road concept if a large enough volume of containers can effectively be transported. This article is published in the International Journal for Life Cycle Assessment.  (Braet, J. (2011):”The environmental impact of container pipeline transport compared to road transport. Case study in the Antwerp Harbor region and some general extrapolations”; Int. Journal Life Cycle Assessment 16:886–896(2011)).

ISUFT and BIG join forces

Last year, the Dutch Buisleiding Industrie Gilde (BIG) and ISUFT a joint cooperation in promoting research on underground freight transportation in the Netherlands and Belgium. The BIG organization represents the pipeline engineering companies in the Netherlands and Belgium.  We hope to set up a research program with universities, governments and industry on this topic.  Last month we presented our initiative to representatives of three port authorities in the southern part of the Netherlands. This initiative focuses in particular on the future traffic flows within the ports and between the ports and their hinterland. The ports in the Netherlands face an enormous challenge to reduce the share of road transportation in hinterland transportation.  Underground freight transportation can be an additional mode of transport itself or can be the connection between the sea terminals and rail and barge terminals in the port. 

BIG celebrated their 20 year anniversary, which resulted in the publication of a most beautiful book on “A journey through Time” (unfortunately only in Dutch). This book contains also articles on underground freight transportation.

George Round

It is with sadness we announce the passing of Professor George F. Round on Monday, January 21, 2012. George was a long-time member of the department of Mechanical Engineering at McMaster.  

George worked as a Research Officer at the Alberta Research Council until 1967 specializing in fluid dynamics, pipeline and pumping systems design. In 1968 the family moved to Burlington, Ontario and George served as a full professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering until 1995, serving as departmental chairman from 1970-1973. 

George was a visiting professor at Cambridge University, Kuwait University, University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Missouri-Columbia. His prodigious work output included over 125 scientific papers, 5 books, and 6 patents.

George was a good friend of Henry Liu and one of the speakers at ISUFT 1999. He kept following the ISUFT activities. Last year, he got hospitalized after an unlucky fall in the bathroom at home.