This seminar will take place on March 17 at 15h30. The seminar will be in a hybrid format with:
- in-person session in the IST Alameda Campus, Room V.015 (Civil Engineering Building)
- online, via Zoom https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/95423051279?pwd=KaQRHHiBMtVKEAVBCb9GmCxsqUmmpY.1
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Summary
Based on my 54 years' experience in the field of transport, this talk will review how transport engineering practice, which originally had been largely focused on the physical sciences, has in more recent decades needed to expand to equally represent the influences from both the economic and the social sciences. Nowadays, when designing major new highways, rail schemes or airports, the computer models that are used to assess the nature of the demand for these investments and their broad design characteristics are best developed through a coherent integration of the relevant elements from the social, economic and physical sciences. This requires engineering graduates to be comfortable at working within truly interdisciplinary teams. Examples from transport planning practice will be discussed to illustrate the need for this integration.
Speaker's bio
Ian is a mathematician/statistician by training, with 54 years research, academic and consultancy experience in transport planning. With his research colleagues at Cambridge University, he founded the consultancy firm ME&P in 1978, where he was managing director prior to its merger into the large engineering firm WSP in 2001. Since leaving WSP in 2011 he acts as an independent consultant and researcher, focussing particularly on providing advice to government, regional and local authorities on land use and transport modelling aspects. Ian's particular interest lies in empirical research into understanding the many interlocking factors that influence the spatial and temporal evolution of passenger and freight transport patterns. He has used this understanding to inform the design and implementation of land use, freight and passenger forecasting models and their usage for investment and policy analysis. Models he has designed include: 1) components of the National Passenger Transport Model of Great Britain, in active use by the UK Department for Transport since the early 2000s; 2) the SCENES and the subsequent TRIMODE passenger and freight models covering all transport movements on all modes across the EU, for use by the European Commission; 3) as well as many national, regional and metropolitan freight and passenger models in twelve countries, spread across four continents.