Seminar Abstract:
Urban transportation systems are undergoing a radical transformation with innovative (yet disrupting) shared-use mobility services. From a system perspective, how do we design and operate an efficient, accessible, and integrated shared-use mobility service meeting the needs of primary stakeholders—users, service providers, and infrastructure-owner-operators (e.g., cities and local transportation agencies)? How can we leverage connected-automated technologies and reinforce the nationwide transportation electrification efforts within the shared-mobility ecosystem? This talk will introduce a community-based ridesharing modeling framework that allocates travel activities to geo-fences based on users’ social costs and pro-environmental attitudes. Next, a mathematical model for optimal operations using automated electric shuttles will be presented, along with potential solution techniques. This model considers the road electrification dimension (charging infrastructure) and service quality within the constraint sets. Finally, the talk will focus on managing curbside operations in cities with shared-use mobility services and describe our simulation-based assessment (with preliminary results) and decision-making models. Although ridesharing (with automated electric shuttles) is among many existing shared-use mobility services, our robust framework integrating automation, connectivity, and electrification can be adapted for general shared-use mobility services, including e-bikes, e-cargo, and car-sharing.

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Husain Aziz is an assistant professor of civil engineering at Kansas State University and leads of the Transportation Infrastructure and Systems (TIS) research lab focusing on the modeling, simulation, and control of traffic flows in smart cities, shared-used mobility, and resilient transportation systems. Dr. Aziz co-leads the transportation infrastructure theme of the ARISE (Adaptive and Resilient Infrastructures driven by Social Equity) project funded by the National Science Foundation Kansas EPSCoR. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and Purdue University in 2010 and 2014, respectively, and his B.Sc. degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 2007. Before joining K-State Civil Engineering, Dr. Aziz held an R&D scientist position at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy (2014 – 2019). He also serves as the associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.