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This paper provides an analysis of a designed underground station infrastructure for vacuum tube high-speed trains for the planned mega transport hub in Poland. The potential of integrating the infrastructure of the station building with sealed low-pressure tubes system is analyzed. The Solidarity Transport Hub Poland is a planned mega hub to be located in Baranów Municipality, Poland, which is comprised of an airport, an airport city, a road, and railway infrastructure. It is to be integrated with the first route of vactrains in Poland. The aim of this paper is to design a hyperloop station building adequate for the advanced technology of low-pressure high-speed trains. Designing a hyperloop station is not trivial, due to technological aspects which have not been hitherto present in airport or railway planning and design, such as low-pressure zones or airlocks which determine possible passenger paths and evacuation roads. Both the mega airport and Polish hyperloop are in the planning stage, therefore, in this paper, available models and designs of the hyperloop station building and infrastructure are used in order to formulate recommendations for further development and identify critical issues related to the safety and reduction of passenger transit time. The main contribution of this paper is a model of the hyperloop station building which respects the principles of spatial planning and safety standards.

Nowadays, in the European Union selective solid waste management be-longs to important responsibilities of municipalities. In Solid Waste Management (SWM) the main operational task is to set a schedule for solid waste collection and to find optimal routes for garbage trucks so that the total costs of solid waste collection service can be minimized subject to a series of constraints which guarantee not only fulfillment of SWM’s obligations but also desirable level of quality of that service. Optimization problem of garbage trucks routing is a special case of rich Vehicle Routing Problem as it has to cover following constraints: pickup nodes (clients) must be visited during their predefined time windows; the number and capacity of depots and specialized sorting units can-not be exceeded; each garbage truck can be assigned to at most one depot; each route should be dedicated to collecting one type of segregated solid waste, and the route must be served by a garbage truck which can collect that type of solid waste; availability of garbage trucks and their drivers must be respected; each garbage truck must be drained at a specialized sorting unit before going back to the depot. This paper contributes with a new Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) model for the Selective Solid Waste Collection Routing Problem (SS-WCRP) with time windows, limited heterogeneous fleet, and different types of segregated solid waste to be collected separately. Utilization of MIP for solving small-sized instance of the Fleet Optimization Problem for Selective Solid Waste Collection (FOPSSWC) is and obtained results are reported.

Nowadays, robust and efficient solid waste collection is crucial to motivate citizens to participate in the circular economy by sorting recyclable solid waste. Vocational vehicles, including garbage trucks, contribute significantly to CO2 emissions; therefore, it is strongly recommended, and in the European Union it is mandatory, to replace conventional-fuel-based garbage trucks with electric ones. For providing sustainable and energy-efficient solid waste collection with a heterogeneous fleet, in-depth mathematical computations are needed to support solving complex decision-making problems, including crew rostering and vehicle routing, because the distance and capacity of electric garbage trucks differ from conventional-fuel-based ones. However, the literature on solid waste collection using electric garbage trucks is still relatively scarce. The main contribution of this paper is developing an optimization problem for balancing travel distance assigned to each garbage truck of a heterogeneous fleet. The problem is based on specific requirements of the Municipal Solid Waste Management in Cracow, Poland, where the working time of routes is balanced and the total time of collection service can be minimized. For the problem, an MIP program was developed to generate optimal crew schedules, so that the hitherto network of segregated solid waste pickup nodes can be served using a heterogeneous fleet in which the share of electric garbage trucks is up to 30%. We study the impact of the changed composition of the fleet on modifications in crew rostering due to the shorter range of an electric vehicle compared to a conventional-fuel-based one.

The aim of therapeutic help in marital crisis is to break the vicious circle of mutual hurtful accusations. The method that the authors present below involves a group of couples working within a closed cycle of meetings. In the course of successive group meetings, the various couples act as reflecting teams (RTs) for each other. This achieves two objectives: the couple recounting their crisis receives nonthreatening feedback, which helps them to implement positive changes and break out of the self-perpetuating destructive interaction. In addition, the couples acting as the RT learn nonjudgmental, nontheorizing and affirmative communication.

The paper is devoted to optimal vaccination scheduling during a pandemic to minimize the probability of infection. The recent COVID-19 pandemic showed that the international community is not properly prepared to manage a crisis of this scale. Just after the vaccines had been approved by medical agencies, the policymakers needed to decide on the distribution strategy. To successfully fight the pandemic, the key is to find the equilibrium between the vaccine distribution schedule and the available supplies caused by limited production capacity. This is why society needs to be divided into stratified groups whose access to vaccines is prioritized. Herein, we present the problem of distributing protective actions (i.e., vaccines) and formulate two mixed-integer programs to solve it. The problem of distributing protective actions (PDPA) aims at finding an optimal schedule for a given set of social groups with a constant probability of infection. The problem of distributing protective actions with a herd immunity threshold (PDPAHIT) also includes a variable probability of infection, i.e., the situation when herd immunity is obtained. The results of computational experiments are reported and the potential of the models is illustrated with examples.

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There are numerous ways of organizing the municipal solid waste collection system. For instance, separate collection of segregated recyclable solid waste can be based on a network of pickup points equipped with big recycling bins (BRB) to which citizens have unlimited access. The key to motivate citizens to use these bins is to provide a robust and efficient system of emptying them. The schedule of segregated solid waste collection from BRBs in Krakow municipality is prepared by decision-makers using manual tools, and there is a need for tools supporting decision-making, as solid waste management is getting more and more complicated due to laws and regulations. In this paper, the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) for segregated solid waste collection from BRBs is solved using Large Neighborhood Search algorithm implemented in the VRP Spreadsheet Solver and illustrated with a case study based on selective recyclables collection from BRBs in Krakow municipality. The real SWM system was adapted for requirements of the VRP Spreadsheet Solver, and obtained results were compared with the requirements of the garbage trucks routing problem in Krakow municipality.