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of the nearby mountains. On their hikes, Steven was told a lot about the local wildlife
and everything his father had learned from the scouts when he was a boy. At that time,
Steven decided that he would dedicate his adult life to preserve that untouched nature
for his own children and the generations after. He soon realized that he could use his
natural talent for mathematics to solve environmental problems and to contribute to
society. His current position in a research and development department for internal
combustion engines allows Steven to take an active part in reducing the emission of
greenhouse gases, which have long been known to cause global warming.
Recent political debates about climate change have led to profound environmental
regulations that limit the maximum permissible emission for vehicles on European
roads. To avoid severe sanctions, the automotive industry has to ensure that their
newly developed engines go below the allowed limit of exhaust fumes. However,
automobile manufacturer face the problem that a nationwide survey of their car fleet
would result in exorbitant cost and effort. Instead of that, Steven proposed to draw
samples from test drives which characterize specific combinations of driver, vehicle,
and route. In further investigations, the derived operational profiles could be used
to simulate typical driving behavior and to spot-check against the newly introduced
emission regulations. Although the top management is not fully convinced, Steven
has strong support from his own rows and was invited to present his detailed proposal
to the decision-making department.
Steven explains that he aims at deriving characteristic operational profiles of their
new vehicle fleet by means of several controlled test drives. His idea is to record
multiple engine parameters during test drives to discover driving behavior patterns
which typically occur under certain circumstances. The main challenge is to develop
an algorithm that is able to efficiently and effectively compare the high-dimensional
measurements with regard to co-occurring temporal patterns. Test drives with a high
number of typical driving behavior patterns may than be used for engine simulations
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