Research | Transportation System Analysis Laboratory

Presentation

The Transportation System Analysis Laboratory was founded in 2003 and consolidated since 2008 with its own structure consisting of a dedicated space for students, thesis students, PhD students and visiting professors. The staff of the laboratory is composed of: Stefano de Luca (full professor and director of the laboratory), Giulio Erberto Cantarella (full professor), Roberta Di Pace (associate professor), Chiara Fiori (assistant professor), Facundo Storani (post-doc researcher), Lucas Joel Cisternas and Francesca Bruno (PhD students) and several external contract collaborators.

The laboratory has about 10 independent computer stations connected to the network. Each computer, in addition to the typical Office packages, is equipped with specialized software. The laboratory hosts exercises within the courses related to the scientific sector ICAR/05-Transportation, thesis students and trainees within the consulting activities that the laboratory carries out through an agreement with the Department of Civil Engineering.

Activities,Topics and Services

The Laboratory deals with the problems of freight and passenger transport with reference to all major modes of transport (road, rail, sea and intermodal). The research, study and consulting activities are mainly addressed to the development and application of models and methods for the analysis of passenger and freight transport systems at urban and suburban scale and for the analysis of impacts on consumption and emissions of vehicles with different powertrain (conventional, electric, hybrid etc.).

The developed topics are related to the territorial organization both in terms of planning / design and management of transport systems. In particular

[1] Transportation Planning

[2] Analysis and modelling of travel behavior

[3] Market penetration of innovative mobility services (Mobility As A Service, Sharing mobility, etc..)

[4] Static and Dynamic Traffic simulation modelling

[5] Signal setting design and Traffic control strategies

[6] Environmental assessment of Transportation Systems

[7] Modelling and simulation of passengers or freight terminals

Specifically, the research topics of the lab include the following: transportation planning; modeling of mobility/travel behavior; cooperative intelligent transportation systems; models for within-day dynamics traffic analysis; user information systems; real-time traffic management; discrete choice models and alternative paradigms; models and algorithms for assignment to transportation networks; representative models of traveler learning; smart/sustainable mobility; sharing mobility; impact analysis, modeling and simulation of a container terminal; experimental analysis, modeling and simulation of the energy consumption of electrified vehicles (private, public and passenger transport) and the assessment of the impact on eco-routing and the load required to the electric grid; integration of microscopic models for the assessment of electric vehicle consumption with traffic control models; well-to-wheels analysis of conventional, hybrid and electric vehicles; modeling, simulation and assessment of the impact of port operations in urban contexts; dynamic assignment of multi-vehicle traffic.

The results of the activities are collected in more than one hundred and fifty national and international scientific publications.

In particular, the Laboratory is active in the editing of:

• tactical planning documents at the urban scale: Urban Traffic Plan, Three-year Plan of Public Transport Services, Plan of Parking Organization;
• strategic planning documents: Regional Transport Plan, Provincial Transport Plan, Urban Mobility Plan, Urban Parking Plan; Urban Sustainable Mobility Plan; Electric Mobility Plan;
• Feasibility studies of options for intervention in a transportation system;
• Airports Master Plan;
• Master Plan of ports and retro-intermodal orts;
• study and simulation of traffic lighted and non traffic lighted intersections;
• Analysis of accessibility of air, sea and intermodal transport terminals.

Internships

The internship activities can be carried out in the laboratory within the framework of the agreements active at the time of activation of the internship. The topics may vary throughout the year and generally concern:

- the drafting of transport planning documents (feasibility studies, urban traffic plans, sector plans),

- the specification, calibration and validation of simulation models of transport systems,

- the specification, calibration validation of simulation models of travel behavior,

- accessibility analysis.

The Laboratory coordinates external internship activities at public or private institutions, but also activities abroad at the Universities of Luxembourg, Budapest, Aveiro.

Equipment

The laboratory has 10 independent computer stations connected to the network. Each computer, in addition to the typical Office packages, is equipped with specialized software for the assignment of mobility demand to individual and/or collective transport networks (TransCadm, VISUM), for the calibration of discrete choice models (Limpdep, A-Logit, Gauss, BioGeme), for multi-agent discrete event modeling of transport systems (Witness, AnyLogic), for the representation of information on geographic information systems (ArcGis, QGis), for the design of simple or networked intersections, traffic lights or not (Transyt, Oscady, Picady), for traffic simulation (Vissim, SUMO); for the calculation of consumption and emissions (Copert, FastSim). Ad hoc models developed in Matlab/Python environment are also used.