Tools for Travel Corridor Management

SPEAKER: Alex Kurzhanskiy, Postdoctoral Researcher, EECS Department, University of California, BerkeleyDATE: Wednesday, February 18, 2009TIME: 12:00-1:30LOCATION: Lewis Hall (RGL) 103RSVP: Adam Gardner, amgardne@usc.edu**Lunch Will Be Served**ABSTRACT: The operational strategies designed to improve traffic conditions on congested travel corridors (freeways and surrounding arterials) are:• Demand management, which focuses on reducing excessive demand;• Incident management, which targets resources to alleviate accident hot spots;• Traveler information, which potentially reduces traveler buffer time;• Traffic control, which implements aggressive ramp metering at locations where significant reductions in congestion are likely to occur.Aurora Road Network Modeler is a tool set that provides quick quantitative assessment of operational strategies. It is based on the Aurora object-oriented framework, designed to model flows in networks. Its basic objects, nodes and links, allow the user to construct heterogeneous road networks. Various event classes make it possible to generate simulation scenarios. The monitor objects can keep track of the state at selected nodes and links, coordinate control actions at nodes, or generate events at nodes or links when the monitored states reach certain thresholds. Aurora RNM uses macroscopic Cell Transmission Model that represents traffic as a compressible fluid in terms of flow, density and speed. The talk will present Aurora RNM and show how it can be used in corridor management.Aurora RNM website: http://code.google.com/p/aurorarnmBIO: Alex Kurzhanskiy received his M.A. in Applied Mathematics from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, in 1998. From 1998 to 2003 he worked as an engineer and consultant for several Silicon Valley companies. He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2007. Currently he is postdoctoral researcher at the EECS Department of UC Berkeley. His research interests include dynamical systems estimation, reachability analysis and control, robust convex optimization, and their application to transportation systems.

Location: Ralph And Goldy Lewis Hall (RGL) - 103

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Georgia Lum