Intermodal (IM) freight systems and their components play a significant role in the U.S. and world economies. Terminals and ports are critical components of these systems. These components however, are, by the nature of their design inherently vulnerable to natural and terrorist attack, and evidence is mounting that an attack on or involving the IM freight transport system and its components would have catastrophic consequences. Significant effort has been expended on the development of technologies and other measures that can aid in addressing these security needs at ports in the United States and abroad. A quantitative measure, termed resilience, is employed to determine the best set of actions to improve security at nodal facilities in an IM network. Resilience accounts for both the innate reliability of a facility and the ability of short-term recovery actions to mitigate negative effects. This concept has been employed at the system level. A framework for its application at the IM component level is proposed. A case-based analysis is conducted to produce the specific steps required to apply this concept to an existing port. The framework is general and can be applied to any IM nodal component, such as terminals, marshalling yards, and border control stations. The resulting ability to quantify the component's level of vulnerability will aid decision makers in assessing trade-offs between investment and costly security implementations.
Natural gas is increasingly important as a fuel for electric power generation as well as other uses due to its environmental advantage over other fossil fuels. Using the World Gas Model, a largescale energy equilibrium system based on a complementarity formulation, this paper analyzes possible future gas cartels and their effects on gas markets in a number of regions across the world. In addition, scenarios related to lower transport costs and decreased unconventional gas supply in the United States are considered.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.