CAEE Seminar by Mohammad Miralinaghi: Advances in Planning for Sustainable Transportation Systems: Towards Automation, Connectivity and Electric-Propelled Transportation

Abstract: Increased urbanization and its attendant problems continue to pose significant challenges to the wellbeing of growing populations worldwide, particularly over the last century. The emergence of smart transportation technologies provides a great opportunity to enhance the sustainability and resilience of transportation systems and therefore address these challenges. This presentation focuses on various sustainable design and management strategies that leverage the benefits of smart transportation technologies. First, the progressive travel management strategy, i.e., the tradable credit scheme (TCS), is discussed, which reduces vehicular emissions and promotes equitable transportation systems such as electric vehicles (EV). Second, to develop an efficient network of charging stations, a novel framework is presented to optimally design the electric charging station locations. This talk also discusses the framework to derive a battery's state of health. Finally, dedicated lanes enable the metropolitan authorities to leverage the benefit of reduced headways between connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) that can mitigate traffic congestion during the transition period with a mixed fleet of CAVs and human-driven vehicles. This talk presents the framework to develop the optimal design of CAV-dedicated lanes, which is derived by considering different practical aspects such as uncertainty in forecasts of CAV penetration rate and social equity.

Biography: Mohammad Miralinaghi (Ph.D., Purdue University) is a Research Fellow at Purdue University’s Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT), Post-doctoral Scholar at Purdue University Lyles School of Civil Engineering, Visiting Researcher at TU Delft, and e-fellow of the National Science Foundation/American Society of Engineering Education program. He is currently a co-PI on three USDOT-funded research projects. Miralinaghi serves as guest editor for special issues of ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, the Journal of Advanced Transportation, and the Sustainability journal. He is assistant paper review coordinator for TRB’s Committee on Transportation Demand Management and a member of the paper-handling team of TRB’s Air Quality and Greenhouse Gas Mitigation committee. In the area of transportation infrastructure planning, Miralinaghi has published at least 18 journal publications, 2 technical reports, and he has presented his work through 54 conference presentations. The work of Miralinaghi has been recognized internationally through the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems’ 2020 Karlaftis Best Paper Prize (for his innovations in travel demand management strategies to promote environmentally sustainable transportation systems) and the Frontiers in the Built Environment journal’s 2020 Sussman Best Paper Prize (for his contributions on CAV-dedicated lane deployment considering social equity).

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