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Books in Social sciences

The Social Sciences collection forms a definitive resource for those entering, researching, or teaching in any of the many disciplines making up this interdisciplinary area of study. Written by experts and researchers from both Academic and Commercial domains, titles offer global scope and perspectives.

Key subject areas include: Library and Information Science; Transportation; Urban Studies; Geography, Planning, and Development; Security; Emergency Management.

  • Transport and Energy Transition

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 16
    • English
    Transport and Energy Transition, Volume 16 highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters written by an international board of authors. Topics in this new release include The role of organization, policy and planning in facilitating (or constraining) the transport energy transition, Behavioral dimensions and dynamics of transport energy transitions, Where crises and social movements meet: momentum for alternative mobility visions, Institutional implications of transport energy transitions – what new institutions will be needed? Can existing institutions adapt?, and Whose Transition? Power and Discourse in Austria's Rural Mobility Transformation.
  • Air Transport: A Computer Science Perspective

    • 1st Edition
    • Sebastian Wandelt + 1 more
    • English
    Air Transport: A Computer Science Perspective examines the integration of computer science principles in air transportation, bridging the gap between theory and real-world applications. It delves into automation, problem solving, and innovative aviation technologies. Authored by a seasoned team of a computer scientist and an airspace engineer, it offers a unique blend of expertise that highlights practical algorithms, data structures, and optimization techniques essential for flight operations and autonomous systems. Readers will learn about the latest regulations, ensuring they are well-equipped to navigate the evolving air transport landscape.Structured in five parts, the book begins with foundational concepts like computational complexity and intelligence. It then explores airline operations, including network design, flight scheduling, fleet assignment, and aircraft routing. The exploration continues with airport operations, focusing on gate assignment, ground vehicle allocation, and delay prediction. In the realm of air traffic flow management, readers will discover trajectory optimization, airspace sectorization, and network resilience assessment. The final section summarizes key insights and future trends.This book is an invaluable resource for transportation engineers, computer scientists, and professionals in data science, software engineering, and aviation research. It is ideal for students in aerospace engineering, computer science, and data science programs, emphasizing practical applications that drive innovation and efficiency in the air transport sector.
  • The End of Driving

    Automated Cars, Sharing vs Owning, and the Future of Mobility
    • 2nd Edition
    • Bern Grush + 2 more
    • English
    Vehicle automation is on dual paths of entrenching private car ownership while simultaneously enhancing transportation services that would make driving unnecessary. Future impacts are uncertain.The End of Driving challenges the assumption that self-driving cars will by themselves reduce traffic congestion and crashes. Evolving vehicle automation will create safer, more convenient vehicles, yet continued reliance on private ownership will increase traffic volume. The authors explore psychological factors sustaining private vehicle use and the challenges of mixed-driver roads, examining why shared robotaxis face behavioral, political, and policy hurdles that will impede mass adoption, despite substantial public benefit.This updated edition examines real-world deployments through 2025 and introduces concepts such as zero car-ownership communities, robotaxi pickup and drop-off orchestration, and urban spaces redesigned around greater mode choices for physical access rather than parking. The book compares privately owned automated cars against shared, on-demand driverless vehicles, using new data to show which model best serves cities.Rather than predicting timelines, the authors use backcasting to map paths toward preferred mobility futures. They propose micro-subsidies, flexible transit integration, and regulatory frameworks to guide automation toward all three pillars of sustainability: ecology, economy, and equity. Shared, automated mobility is achievable and desirable but requires the deliberate actions described in this book.
  • Meeting SDGs in Smart City Infrastructures

    Federation, Interoperability, and Discoverability
    • 1st Edition
    • Manas Pradhan
    • English
    Meeting SDGs in Smart City Infrastructures: Federation, Interoperability, and Discoverability explores the current state-of-the-art practices in smart city digitization and governance processes, aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It discusses the pros and cons of various methods, standards, and initiatives involved in the digital transformation of cities from policy-maker, implementer, and end-user perspectives. Utilizing real-world use cases from cities worldwide, the book highlights their goals, adopted measures, and their outcomes. It provides guidelines for achieving long-term service federation, interoperability, and discoverability while keeping the UN SDGs in perspective.This resource is invaluable for practitioners and researchers in the smart city domain and will help them better understand existing and evolving technologies and formulate their processes to provide sustainable models for urban development.
  • Reliable Decision-Making for Sustainable Transportation

    • 1st Edition
    • Gholamreza Haseli + 2 more
    • English
    Reliable Decision-Making for Sustainable Transportation explores decision-making methods that incorporate expert and decision-maker opinions for improved reliability. The book examines fuzzy sets that capture ambiguity and enable a more comprehensive analysis of stakeholder perspectives, focusing on transportation case studies to demonstrate techniques for weighing criteria, ranking alternatives, and selecting optimal and reliable decisions. It seeks to advance transportation planning, traffic engineering, road safety, and sustainability by integrating state-of-the-art decision support systems that leverage AI and multiple stakeholder viewpoints.This approach will benefit researchers and professionals across transportation, decision sciences, supply chain management, and operations looking for innovative ways to model uncertainty and decision-maker reliability and providing methodologies and frameworks for more robust group decisions.
  • Walking and Pedestrians

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 15
    • English
    Walking and pedrestrians series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters. Each chapter is written by an international board of authors.
  • Forensic Serology

    • 1st Edition
    • Shanan S. Tobe
    • English
    This book provides a comprehensive and complete synopsis of forensic serology. It includes background information on different biological substances that we can detect, how the serological tests work, what the testing looks like, and how to interpret the results. Coverage includes all aspects of serological testing including basic presumptive testing, confirmatory testing, and new methods of testing, such as mRNA, methylation, proteomics, and much more.Forensic Serology is written at a level which anyone with basic knowledge of science can fully understand and may be of particular use to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as working professionals.
  • Human Factors in Traffic Safety for Highway and Traffic Engineers

    • 1st Edition
    • Alexei Tsyganov
    • English
    Human Factors in Traffic Safety for Highway and Traffic Engineers provides human factors principles and findings to allow nonexperts to consider the road user’s capabilities and limitations more effectively into the practice of design, operations, and safety. It provides data and insights on the needs, capabilities, and limitations of road users, including perception and effects of visual demands, cognition, and influence of expectations on driving behavior. It bridges the gap between human factors research and practical application, presenting complex psychological insights in an accessible manner.This book begins with Part 1 explaining the significance of the traffic safety problem and giving an overview of the importance of human factors in highway design and traffic engineering. Part 2 focuses on driver information perception and processing, including perception of depth and speed, driver’s visual search, how road users search for information, and how mental and information load affects drivers’ performance. Part 3 provides results of investigations of traffic crash causation and reviews major driver errors. Part 4 then describes key principles of road users’ considerations during highway design and traffic operation. Finally, Part 5 focuses on safety analysis and assessment and describes in detail the existing methods to evaluate human factors during safety assessments.This is a valuable resource for professionals in highway and traffic engineering, researchers, policymakers, urban planners, and students to understand how human factors contribute to traffic incidents and how to mitigate these through design and operational strategies.
  • Net-Zero Transit

    The Future of Eco-Friendly Transportation
    • 1st Edition
    • Paul C. Okonkwo + 2 more
    • English
    Net-Zero Transit: The Future of Eco-Friendly Transportation thoroughly examines the possible future of environmentally friendly transportation, presenting creative approaches and tactics to attain a transit sector with no net emissions. The book explores the convergence of technology, politics, and consumer behavior to provide a comprehensive perspective on achieving environmentally friendly transportation worldwide. The authors illustrate the practicality and advantages of adopting environmentally friendly transportation systems through the examination of real-life examples and the analysis of data.The authors offer practical assistance for establishing sustainable practices in the transit sector by emphasizing successful efforts and innovative solutions. In addition, they provide valuable perspectives on possible obstacles and hurdles that may occur throughout the shift towards achieving net-zero emissions, as well as suggestions for effectively addressing and surmounting them. It uses theoretical analysis and case studies to explore the benefits and challenges of transitioning to a zero-net-carbon transportation system. The economic, social, and environmental impacts of transitioning to net-zero transit are discussed, including the role of government policies, public-private partnerships, and community engagement. The analytical framework of this book encompasses several scenarios, such as the implementation of carbon policy, carbon pricing, carbon offset programs, climate-conscious car-flight-marine pooling, climate-conscious car-flight-marine green gridlock, pedal-walking power progress, and future-proof transportation. It employs real historical datasets from different countries and regions across the globe to forecast future emissions from various transportation modes using a range of machine learning techniques.This book is an invaluable resource for legislators, industry experts, and individuals seeking to promote environmentally friendly transportation solutions and contribute positively to the environment. Its detailed analysis offers actionable insights to policymakers and stakeholders in the transportation industry, enabling them to make well-informed decisions regarding measures to reduce emissions.
  • Intelligent Urban Mobility

    Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Transportation
    • 1st Edition
    • Muhammet Deveci
    • English
    Intelligent Urban Mobility: Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Transportation explores the role of technology in enabling greener, more accessible transportation in cities worldwide. This book provides insights into leveraging decision support systems to drive positive change by focusing on applied soft computing techniques, artificial intelligence, and algorithms for fuzzy systems. Researchers and professionals will find actionable information on mitigating congestion and emissions through sustainable mobility initiatives, which bridges the gap between theory and real-world practice.The book also offers technical guidance and expert perspectives on the application of decision support systems to evaluate and optimize planning for sustainable transit options. The book highlights innovative models and frameworks for analyzing mobility options and planning sustainable transport systems. It is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, and professionals in transportation, urban planning, civil engineering, and decision sciences who aim to redesign city transportation to reduce environmental impact and carbon emissions.