Lecture: Transportation Modeling and Simulation: an Effort of 50+ Years

Fri., Mar 30, 2007 - Time: 11:00am - 12:00noon

Professor Daiheng Ni from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass/Amherst will deliver this lecture as part of the Spring 2007 Operations Research / Management Science Seminar series. All are invited to attend.

More information about Professor Daiheng Ni.

Title: Transportation Modeling and Simulation:
an Effort of 50+ Years

Abstract: It has been half a century since the seminal work on traffic flow, the L-W-R model, was published. Transportation modeling and simulation has evolved from simple to complex and numerous models have been proposed and simulation packages developed. Macroscopic models capture high-level traffic dynamics using fluid-based techniques; mesoscopic models apply Cellular Automata to describe traffic movement with reasonable fidelity; microscopic models provide finer level of detail by personalizing each driver-vehicle unit and describing its behavior using car-following, lane-changing, and gap-acceptance logics. Today, these models and packages are serving as powerful tools in transportation engineering research and practice. This talk will review the evolution of transportation modeling and simulation. In addition, future directions will be discussed with an emphasis on models beyond the microscopic level.


This series is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Support for this series is provided by the Isenberg School of Management, the Department of Finance and Operations Management, and the John F. Smith Memorial Fund.

Check here for more details about this speaker series.

Location: SOM 112 (wheelchair accessible)

Contact Information

Trisha Woolley
(413) 577-2761
twoolley@som.umass.edu