M Baker Thesis: Preface

In this preface I give a brief account of how this thesis came about. It consists of a review of the research work I have done in the Energy Research Group over the last five years.

In October 1975, when I joined the group, I started a short study on goods vehicles. I was aiming to construct a vehicle population model akin to that for cars developed by Chapman and Mortimer (1975). The study led me to look at freight transport statistics and freight transport forecasts. While studying these I became dissatisfied with the attempts of Tulpule (1969), Tanner (1974) and Sharp (1973) to use a tonne-kilometre/ gross domestic product relationship for making forecasts. I began to develop ideas on other ways in which freight transport forecasts could be made. I was also involved with the group electricity system study (Energy Research Group 1976).

In 1976 I became involved in the Future Transport Fuels study (Chapman, Charlesworth and Baker 1976). Some of my contribution to this study included identifying sources of data and working out how to build up an energy supply and demand scenario into which to fit the study of transport energy demand.

Overlapping with this was work on a submission to the Science Research Council for continuation of the group's input-output (I.O.) study with which I was peripherally associated. My contributions to the preparation of the submission were suggestions on how the physical I.O. model could be dynamicised and suggestions on how transport could be incorporated. At this time I wrote 4 working papers (Baker 1977a), (Baker 1977b), (Baker 1977c) and (Mellish and Baker 1977). The first two of these related to my interest in freight transport and were to have been the basis of the work for my thesis which was going to be on "the determinants of freight transport", (Chapter 1 of this thesis is based on these two papers.)

Later in the year (1977) I also became involved in reworking a paper which had been written by another member of the group (Martin Mellish who subsequently changed his name to Vimukta). The paper which was on "Integrating wave power into the electricity supply system" (Vimukta et al 1978) had been accepted for an international conference, but several changes had been called for. My contribution to the revised paper was major since the computer programmes (upon which the paper was based) were very poorly documented and required substantial revision.

The groups work on input-output led to an approach to the Transport and Road Research Laboratory to see if we could do some work on providing a disaggregation of the transport entries (between passenger and freight) in the I.O. tables, for both 1968 and 1974. At the time the Central Statistical Office were in the process of constructing the 1974 tables. I was involved in the setting up of the resultant research contract and was responsible for most of the work on the study. Due to the amount of work involved it was only possible to obtain results for 1974 (see Chapter 3 of this thesis and (Baker 1979a), (Baker 1979b) and (Baker 1980).

During this period I was also involved in a continuation of the Future Transport Fuels study which involved looking at Road Vehicle Refuelling Infrastructures. (I have completely reworked this study and it appears as Chapter 2 of this thesis.)

During 1978 and 1979 I was heavily involved in student politics. This involvement ceased during September 1979 which left me with one year in which to complete my thesis work. Through out the period 1976 to 1979 I had intended that my thesis should be on freight transport. However on reviewing the work involved in what I had originally intended to do (Baker 1977a) and (Baker 1977b) it became apparent that there was at least a years work to do before any writing up could start. I also came to realise that in the previous 4 years I had done a lot of research, all original and much of it on my own and largely unsupervised. I decided that I should write up work I had already done, rather than embark on any new work.

Although not intentional there was a common thread through all of the work I had done. This was about the problems involved in making forecasts. It is this thread which provides the theme of this thesis and to illustrate some of the points made in the thesis I have used three pieces of my previous work as case studies. These are on freight transport, vehicle refuelling infrastructures and the transport input-output study.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the other members of the Energy Research Group for providing a very stimulating atmosphere to work in. In particular I would like to thank Jake for all his help and encouragement in this work and in life.

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