The conference site
July 4, Pre-COTA International Conference of Transportation Professionals (CICTP) 2017 co-sponsored by School of Civil Engineering and Transportation of South China University of Technology (SCUT) and Chinese overseas Transportation Association (COTA) was held at University Town Center SCUT Hotel. The conference attracted more than 80 people from foreign outstanding institutions, Sun Yat-sen University, Jilin University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Guangdong University of Technology and other universities to attend.
Domestic and foreign experts are making thematic reports
The conference is concerned about the future development of traffic, such as safety, green, intelligence. Participants discussed the issues such as multimodal and smart transportation, safety and sustainable transportation, Guangdong-Hong Kong -Macao bay area transportation development and research and area transportation development research and practice.
Professor Michael Walton of the American Academy of Engineering and University of Texas at Austin made a thematic report titled 'Growth in International Trade and Protection of the Highway Infrastructure'. He mainly analyzed the impact of growth in international trade on container transportation and how to facilitate the increasing demand for use of international containers while preserving the highway infrastructure. He also indicated that infrastructure-friendlier truck or chassis configurations can be designed to reduce pavement and bridge consumption of heavy container trucks.
Professor Pitu Mirchandani from School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering of Arizona State University made a thematic report titled 'Autonomous Mobility on Demand: Contribution to Smart City Architecture'. He introduced the challenges for a smart city architecture and started a discussion on how autonomous electric vehicles for providing mobility on demand for first-mile/last-mile can meet some of these challenges.
With the thematic report 'Real-Time Inter-Modalism for Airline Disruption Management and Airport Congestion Mitigation', Associate Professor Yu Zhang from Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of University of South Florida analyzed the loss due to airline delays and airport congestion. And the concept of Real-time Inter-Modal Substitution/Diversion (RTIMS/D) and regional ground delay program (R-GDP) were proposed.
Professor Robert Bertini of University of South Florida made a thematic report titled 'Bringing Order to Chaos: The Growing Role of Proactive Traffic Management Solutions'. In this report, the role of proactive traffic management was analyzed, an overview of proactive traffic management solutions that fit particular problems was presented and a summary of applications and algorithms uncovered during an international survey was described. At last, a case study of a worldwide analysis of variable speed limit (VSL) system was presented.
With the title 'Reliable Sensor Location for Object Positioning and Surveillance via Trilateration', Professor Yanfeng Ouyang from Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign analyzed the importance of object positioning and surveillance and present a reliable sensor location model and its solution approaches.
The professors are making thematic reports
During the thematic speech 'Safe & Sustainable Transportation Development' in the afternoon, with the title 'Ridesharing with Autonomous Vehicles Considering Activity Duration Uncertainty', Associate Professor Xiaolei Guo of University of Windsor analyzed that autonomous vehicles (AV) have great potential for increasing ridesharing when activity uncertainly is considered and demonstrated this in two scenarios.
Professor Xinsha Fu from School ofCivil Engineering and Transportation of South China University of Technology made a thematic report titled 'Three-Dimensional Alignment Design and Safety Evaluation of Highway'.In this report, a new three-dimensional highway geometric design method was developed adopting curvature and torsion as alignment design indexes, based on the three-dimensional curve of highway centerline in nature. Then, the engineering constrains of highway three-dimensional alignment was analyzed from aspects of geometric continuity, vehicle stability and driving comfort, and a constraining model was established. Finally, a new safety evaluation method based on three-dimensional alignment was suggested to amend the deficiencies of current safety evaluation method.
Assistant Professor Shanjiang Zhu of George Mason University made a thematic report titled 'Assessing Travel Behavior Responses to Transit Network Disruption Using Innovative Data Collection Methods'. In this report, travel behavior data was collected based on different methods. Algorithms were developed to infer the travel choices. And the assessment of travel behavior responses to transit network disruption was given.
In his report 'Cause Analysis of Traffic Congestion and Trend Analysis of Change of Trip Structure in Large Cities', Professor Wenzhou Jin from School ofCivil Engineering and Transportation of South China University of Technology analyzed the reasons of traffic congestion in domestic big cities from the essence of human needs in order to explain the relationship between traffic congestion and the density of the city. And then he analyzed the variation trend of travel structure and put forwards the government management ideas to solve the traffic problem.
Round Table Discussion
The conference also held a Round Table Discussion on the theme of 'Area Transportation Development Research & Practice'. Domestic and foreign experts and scholars participated in the discussions actively and put forward valuable suggestions to provide guidance for area transportation development. All workshop speakers also visited Guangzhou Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Experts gave recognition to the development of BRT of Guangzhou and put forwards suggestions for further development.
Through this conference, foreign experts and scholars have deepened their understanding of School ofCivil Engineering and Transportation of South China University of Technology. And the conference has laid a solid foundation for promoting international high level of academic cooperation and participation in Guangzhou international campus construction.