Transportation Modeling in the Era of Big Data, Sharing Economy and Smart Cities
Abstract
Travel and traffic models remain the primary decision support tools for transportation policy, planning and operations. Many state-of-the-practice modeling methods were developed decades ago with arguably obsolete assumptions on data availability, mobility technology and application needs. The emergence of new data sources, sharing economy, and smart city technologies presents both opportunities and challenges to the next-generation transportation models. This seminar starts with exploring how to advance transportation planning and simulation models to: (1) Leverage trillions of transportation data records generated each day from mobile devices and smart sensors; (2) Consider mobility-on-demand and crowd-sourced transportation options in a sharing economy; and (3) Analyze smart city technologies such as connected vehicles and urban automation. These new model capabilities are then demonstrated with an ongoing collaborative project between the National Transportation Center at the University of Maryland, (a seven-university National UTC, funded by the U.S. DOT) and the Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) within the U.S. Department of Energy. In addition to discussing traditional model applications such as transportation planning, demand management and integrated/active corridor traffic management, this seminar also highlights brand new model applications for congestion mitigation and enhanced sustainability, enabled by big data and technology innovations.
Sponsored by: Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R), University Transportation Centers Program
DISCLAIMER: The views, opinions, findings and conclusions reflected in this presentation are the responsibility of the authors only and do not represent the official policy or position of the USDOT/OST-R, or any State or other entity.
For more information, contact Denise E. Dunn at denise.e.dunn@dot.gov