Transportation in the context of Modes of transport

Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, the liberalization of capital movements, the development of transportation, and the advancement of information and communication technologies. The term globalization first appeared in the early 20th century (supplanting an earlier French term mondialisation). It developed its current meaning sometime in the second half of the 20th century, and came into popular use in the 1990s to describe the unprecedented international connectivity of the post–Cold War world.The origins of globalization can be traced back to the 18th and 19th centuries, driven by advances in transportation and communication technologies. These developments increased global interactions, fostering the growth of international trade and the exchange of ideas, beliefs, and cultures. While globalization is primarily an economic process of interaction and integration, it is also closely linked to social and cultural dynamics. Additionally, disputes and international diplomacy have played significant roles in the history and evolution of globalization, continuing to shape its modern form. Though many scholars place the origins of globalization in modern times, others trace its history to long before the European Age of Discovery and voyages to the New World, and some even to the third millennium BCE. Large-scale globalization began in the 1820s, and in the late 19th century and early 20th century drove a rapid expansion in the connectivity of the world's economies and cultures. The term global city was subsequently popularized by sociologist Saskia Sassen in her work The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1991).

Globalization describes the growing interdependence of the world's economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information. Countries have built economic partnerships to facilitate these movements over many centuries.

The term built environment refers to human-made conditions and is often used in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, sociology, and anthropology, among others. These curated spaces provide the setting for human activity and were created to fulfill human desires and needs. The term can refer to a plethora of components including the traditionally associated buildings, cities, public infrastructure, transportation, open space, as well as more conceptual components like farmlands, dammed rivers, wildlife management, and even domesticated animals.

The built environment is made up of physical features. However, when studied, the built environment often highlights the connection between physical space and social consequences. It impacts the environment and how society physically maneuvers and functions, as well as less tangible aspects of society such as socioeconomic inequity and health. Various aspects of the built environment contribute to scholarship on housing and segregation, physical activity, food access, climate change, and environmental racism.

Urban planning (also called city planning or town planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks, and their accessibility. Traditionally, urban planning followed a top-down approach in master planning the physical layout of human settlements. The primary concern was the public welfare, which included considerations of efficiency, sanitation, protection and use of the environment, as well as taking account of effects of the master plans on the social and economic activities. Over time, urban planning has adopted a focus on the social and environmental "bottom lines" that focuses on using planning as a tool to improve the health and well-being of people and maintain sustainability standards. In the early 21st century, urban planning experts such as Jane Jacobs called on urban planners to take resident experiences and needs more into consideration.

Urban planning answers questions about how people will live, work, and play in a given area and thus, guides orderly development in urban, suburban and rural areas. Although predominantly concerned with the planning of settlements and communities, urban planners are also responsible for planning the efficient transportation of goods, resources, people, and waste; the distribution of basic necessities such as water and electricity; a sense of inclusion and opportunity for people of all kinds, culture and needs; economic growth or business development; improving health and conserving areas of natural environmental significance that actively contributes to reduction in CO₂ emissions as well as protecting heritage structures and built environments. Since most urban planning teams consist of highly educated individuals that work for city governments, recent debates focus on how to involve more community members in city planning processes.

Commerce is the organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions that directly or indirectly contribute to the smooth, unhindered exchange of goods, services, and other things of value—predominantly through transactional processes—at the right time, place, quantity, quality and price through various channels among the original producers and the final consumers within local, regional, national or international economies. The diversity in the distribution of natural resources, differences of human needs and wants, and division of labour along with comparative advantage are the principal factors that give rise to commercial exchanges.

Commerce consists of trade and aids to trade (i.e. auxiliary commercial services) taking place along the entire supply chain. Trade is the exchange of goods (including raw materials, intermediate and finished goods) and services between buyers and sellers in return for an agreed-upon price at traditional (or online) marketplaces. It is categorized into domestic trade, including retail and wholesale as well as local, regional, inter-regional and international/foreign trade (encompassing import, export and entrepôt/re-export trades). The exchange of currencies (in foreign exchange markets), commodities (in commodity markets/exchanges) and securities and derivatives (in stock exchanges and financial markets) in specialized exchange markets, typically operating under the domain of finance and investment, also falls under the umbrella of trade. On the other hand, auxiliary commercial activities (aids to trade) which can facilitate trade include commercial intermediaries, banking, credit financing and related services, transportation, packaging, warehousing, communication, advertising and insurance. Their purpose is to remove hindrances related to direct personal contact, payments, savings, funding, separation of place and time, product protection and preservation, knowledge and risk.

Social inequality occurs when resources within a society are distributed unevenly, often as a result of inequitable allocation practices that create distinct unequal patterns based on socially defined categories of people. Differences in accessing social goods within society are influenced by factors like power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, intelligence and class. Social inequality usually implies the lack of equality of outcome, but may alternatively be conceptualized as a lack of equality in access to opportunity.

Social inequality is linked to economic inequality, usually described as the basis of the unequal distribution of income or wealth. Although the disciplines of economics and sociology generally use different theoretical approaches to examine and explain economic inequality, both fields are actively involved in researching this inequality. However, social and natural resources other than purely economic resources are also unevenly distributed in most societies and may contribute to social status. Norms of allocation can also affect the distribution of rights and privileges, social power, access to public goods such as education or the judicial system, adequate housing, transportation, credit and financial services such as banking and other social goods and services.

Energy development is the field of activities focused on obtaining sources of energy from natural resources. These activities include the production of renewable, nuclear, and fossil fuel derived sources of energy, and for the recovery and reuse of energy that would otherwise be wasted. Energy conservation and efficiency measures reduce the demand for energy development, and can have benefits to society with improvements to environmental issues.

Societies use energy for transportation, manufacturing, illumination, heating and air conditioning, and communication, for industrial, commercial, agricultural and domestic purposes. Energy resources may be classified as primary resources, where the resource can be used in substantially its original form, or as secondary resources, where the energy source must be converted into a more conveniently usable form. Non-renewable resources are significantly depleted by human use, whereas renewable resources are produced by ongoing processes that can sustain indefinite human exploitation.

In transportation, cargo refers to goods transported by land, water or air, while freight refers to its conveyance. In economics, freight refers to goods transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. The term cargo is also used in case of goods in the cold-chain, because the perishable inventory is always in transit towards a final end-use, even when it is held in cold storage or other similar climate-controlled facilities, including warehouses.

Multi-modal container units, designed as reusable carriers to facilitate unit load handling of the goods contained, are also referred to as cargo, especially by shipping lines and logistics operators. When empty containers are shipped each unit is documented as a cargo and when goods are stored within, the contents are termed containerized cargo. Similarly, aircraft ULD boxes are also documented as cargo, with an associated packing list of the items contained within.

A mode of transport is a method or way of travelling, or of transporting people or cargo. The different modes of transport include air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road transport. Other modes of transport also exist, including pipelines, cable transport, and space transport. Human-powered transport and animal-powered transport are sometimes regarded as distinct modes, but they may lie in other categories such as land or water transport.

In general, transportation refers to the moving of people, animals, and other goods from one place to another, and means of transport refers to the transport facilities used to carry people or cargo according to the chosen mode. Examples of the means of transport include automobile, airplane, ship, truck, and train. Each mode of transport has a fundamentally different set of technological solutions. Each mode has its own infrastructure, vehicles, transport operators and operations.

A pipeline is a system of pipes for long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas, typically to a market area for consumption. Industry datasets indicate the length of the global trunk/transmission pipeline network is on the order of ~2.19 million km by 2025, with North America accounting for ~44%. The United States had 65%, Russia had 8%, and Canada had 3%, thus 76% of all pipeline were in these three countries. The main attribute to pollution from pipelines is caused by corrosion and leakage.

Pipeline and Gas Journal's worldwide survey figures indicate that 118,623 miles (190,905 km) of pipelines are planned and under construction. Of these, 88,976 miles (143,193 km) represent projects in the planning and design phase; 29,647 miles (47,712 km) reflect pipelines in various stages of construction. Liquids and gases are transported in pipelines, and any chemically stable substance can be sent through a pipeline.

A bridge is a structure that crosses an obstacle such as a river, lake, railroad, road, or ravine. Its primary function is to transport vehicles, trains, and pedestrians, but bridges may also accommodate pipelines, buildings, wildlife, and canals. Basic structures used in bridge design include arches, trusses, beams, cantilevers, suspension cables, and cable-stays. Bridges are configured in a variety of forms, such as viaducts, aqueducts, trestles, movable bridges, double-deckers, pontoons, and portable military bridges. They may also be categorized by their materials, which include wood, brick, stone, iron, steel, and concrete.

The history of bridges reflects the evolution of humankind's engineering technologies. The Romans and ancient Chinese built major bridges of stone and timber. During the Renaissance, advances in science and engineering led to wider bridge spans and more elegant designs. Concrete was perfected in the early 1800s, and proved to be superior to stone in many regards. With the Industrial Revolution came mass-produced steel, which enabled the creation of suspension and cable-stayed bridges that could span wide obstacles.

World energy supply and consumption refers to the global supply of energy resources and its consumption. The system of global energy supply consists of the energy development, refinement, and trade of energy. Energy supplies may exist in various forms such as raw resources or more processed and refined forms of energy. The raw energy resources include for example coal, unprocessed oil and gas, uranium. In comparison, the refined forms of energy include for example refined oil that becomes fuel and electricity. Energy resources may be used in various different ways, depending on the specific resource (e.g. coal), and intended end use (industrial, residential, etc.). Energy production and consumption play a significant role in the global economy. It is needed in industry and global transportation. The total energy supply chain, from production to final consumption, involves many activities that cause a loss of useful energy.

Total energy consumption tends to increase by about 1–2% per year. As of 2022, energy consumption is still about 80% from fossil fuels. More recently, renewable energy has been growing rapidly, averaging about 20% increase per year in the 2010s.

Private transport (as opposed to public transport) is the personal or individual use of transportation which are not available for use by the general public, where in theory the user can decide freely on the time and route of transit ('choice rider' vs. 'captive rider'), using vehicles such as: private car, company car, bicycle, dicycle, self-balancing scooter, motorcycle, scooter, aircraft, boat, snowmobile, carriage, horse, etc., or recreational equipment such as roller skates, inline skates, sailboat, sailplane, skateboard etc.

A conglomerate (/kəŋˈɡlɒmərət/) is a type of multi-industry company that consists of several different and unrelated business entities that operate in various industries. A conglomerate usually is a parent company that owns and controls many subsidiaries, which are legally independent but financially and strategically dependent on the parent company. Conglomerates are often large and multinational corporations that have a global presence and a diversified portfolio of products and services. Conglomerates can be formed by merger and acquisitions, spin-offs, or joint ventures.

Conglomerates are common in many countries and sectors, such as media, banking, energy, mining, manufacturing, retail, defense, and transportation. This type of organization aims to achieve economies of scale, market power, risk diversification, and financial synergy. However, they also face challenges such as complexity, bureaucracy, agency problems, and regulation.

A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping.Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term is most frequently applied to devices made from materials that are durable and are often partly or completely rigid.

A container can also be considered as a basic tool, consisting of any device creating a partially or fully enclosed space that can be used to contain, store, and transport objects or materials.

An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy.

Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power generation), heat energy (e.g. geothermal), chemical energy, electric potential and nuclear energy (from nuclear fission or nuclear fusion). Many of these processes generate heat as an intermediate energy form; thus heat engines have special importance. Some natural processes, such as atmospheric convection cells convert environmental heat into motion (e.g. in the form of rising air currents). Mechanical energy is of particular importance in transportation, but also plays a role in many industrial processes such as cutting, grinding, crushing, and mixing.

The basic needs approach is one of the major approaches to the measurement of absolute poverty in developing countries globally. It works to define the absolute minimum resources necessary for long-term physical well-being, usually in terms of consumption goods. The poverty line is then defined as the amount of income required to satisfy the needs of the people. The "basic needs" approach was introduced by the International Labour Organization's World Employment Conference in 1976. "Perhaps the high point of the WEP was the World Employment Conference of 1976, which proposed the satisfaction of basic human needs as the overriding objective of national and international development policy. The basic needs approach to development was endorsed by governments and workers' and employers' organizations from all over the world. It influenced the programmes and policies of major multilateral and bilateral development agencies, and was the precursor to the human development approach."

A traditional list of immediate "basic needs" is food (including water), shelter and clothing. Many modern lists also include also transportation (as proposed in the Three Principles of the People), sanitation, education, and healthcare. Different agencies use different lists.