Cities around the world are experiencing great challenges in terms of resiliency and adaptability in the face of fast growing populations, high dependency of critical infrastructure, and extreme -sometimes catastrophic- events. Among all the problems identified in urban transportation, this proposal focuses on the following: a) traffic congestion and parking difficulties, b) environmental impacts and energy consumption generated by circulation, and c) accidents and safety. The aforementioned problems may appear as a chain reaction (e.g., a high congested road results in increased pollution due to longer commuting, which in turn may increase the risk of accidents due to driver fatigue), or may appear in an isolated manner. In general terms, the greater the complexity of a transportation system, the greater the potential for disruptions. Therefore, we address the problems from the perspective of ICTbased research.
Our objectives are the following:
1) To integrate advanced data analysis and novel models of traffic behavior to provide realtime decision support systems based on proposed algorithms and methods,
2) To design adaptable and sustainable transport infrastructure through the use of renewable energy sources in microgrids for urban electric vehicles, and
3) To design secure communication and networking protocols that support realtime decision making from users, and enable a resilient operation of urban transportation in cases of disruptions, outages, and disaster events. Results from our research will be applied to a variety of usecases, for example, decision support systems will be employed in prototype applications for citizens and drivers to make realtimedecisions about public transit tripplanning or parking. Such systems may also help in the design of dynamic road infrastructure (e.g., change of traffic light timers, road directions, etc.).
We also expect to provide experimental validations of the proposed microgrid for electrical vehicles, in order to measure the reduction in environmental impact and pollution. The communication and networking protocols are expected to provide an increase in availability and security of information required by the proposed systems (i.e., decision system and microgrid control system), in terms of realtime delivery of information when infrastructure is available or through resilient and secure dissemination mechanisms via adhoc networking when no infrastructure is available due to service disruption. This project will provide a view of transportation problems with research that requires integration of computing, communications, and control methods with the aim of enabling resilient urban transportation systems in smart cites. Results derived from this proposal may benefit future city design and developing plans, especially in large cities of developed and developing countries.