No abstract

Aids to navigation are established to assist vessels in the navigation with special importance in narrow channels, rivers, or areas with special dangers to navigation. Whether the design of the aids to navigation (AtoN) system is optimum depends on ship positioning, which is affected by several factors: waterway geometry, metocean conditions, design ship, pilotage, and the AtoN themselves, being a crucial part of the design of a waterway.Optimizing the type of signals and the distance between them allows, not only for safer navigation, but to expand the limits of the waterway by assisting larger vessels to move safely along the waterway, as well as to minimize dredging costs and dredging area by optimizing simultaneously the design of both: the waterway and the Aids to Navigation. An equilibrium is required between the investment and maintenance costs, and therefore, this combined assessment and optimization allows to finally get both, technically and economically feasible projects without detriments on the safety of the waterway.The use of fast time manoeuvring models and Real Time Simulations allows to check and verify the optimization and improvements in the waterway and in the aids to navigation system. Real Time Simulators and manoeuvring sessions are the perfect place for all stakeholders (Port Authorities, Pilots, Harbour Masters, waterway designers, shipowners, …) to interact, discuss, evaluate, and agree on the best option for the improvement of navigation conditions while preserving the safety of the operations, as it allows to verify the effectiveness of the improvements before implementing them in the reality.

During the early years of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) loudness calculation standard for sound broadcasting [ITU-R (2006), Rec. BS Series, 1770], the need for additional loudness descriptors to evaluate short-form content, such as commercials and live inserts, was identified. This work proposes a loudness control scheme to prevent loudness jumps, which can bother audiences. It employs short-form content audio detection and dynamic range processing methods for the maximum loudness level criteria. Detection is achieved by combining principal component analysis for dimensionality reduction and support vector machines for binary classification. Subsequent processing is based on short-term loudness integrators and Hilbert transformers. The performance was assessed using quality classification metrics and demonstrated through a loudness control example.

Resumo-Determinar como o modelo de loudness BS.1770 para a radiodifusão poderia incluir medidas de objetos sonoros com localizações dinâmicas,é uma questão de estudo em andamento no ITU-R. Este trabalho buscou avaliar o efeito da reverberação na sensação de loudness provocada em participantes de um experimento de casamento de loudness entre pares de estímulos sonoros. Das respostas dos participantes, derivou-se uma curva de ajuste de ganho para a filtragem psicoacústica do modelo ITU-R. As predições de ambos os modelos foram então comparadas por suas proximidades em relação aos intervalos de confiança dos ajustes de nível sonoro feitos pelos participantes.