Dr. Pitu Mirchandani, professor in the School of Computation, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University, will give a talk Monday (Oct. 26) at 3 p.m. in Room 203 of the Zachry Engineering Center at Texas A&M University.

Michandani’s talk, “OR-IE-SE Models in Transportation and Traffic,” is part of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering’s seminar series sponsored by Parsons Corp.

Abstract
Real-time transportation systems include systems such as real-time traffic signal control systems, real-time transport scheduling systems and real-time freight dispatch systems. Given the vast amount of streaming data that is available through sensors for operating such systems, one can make better real-time decisions if such data is used appropriately. “Real-time” necessarily implies that it is some sort of feedback control, where new decisions are implemented based on “feedback” from sensors that measure the “state of the system.” As such, the attributes of the algorithms embedded in the feedback influence how well the system responds to scheduled and unscheduled external events.

This talk will first present a framework for the design of a real-time adaptive systems and some current work in traffic adaptive signal control systems require that various traffic data be collected in order to develop a traffic model within which the desired performance optimization can be completed. Some OR, systems engineering and statistical models used in a system developed by the presenter, referred to as RHODES, will be discussed. In particular, the next generation of traffic control systems which will have more vehicle location information, will be introduced.

In the second part of the talk, some new applications of the framework for the design of a wide-area adaptive emergency management for evacuations will be briefly discussed using, more appropriately, feedback instead of the predominant open-loop approaches that appear in the literature. In this case the algorithms embedded in the feedback are based on adaptive control of dynamic traffic flows in a network. Unlike in conventional network flow algorithms, traffic flows must now consider vehicular traffic flow theories, as well as random route choices of evacuees. The role of communications, computers and sensors will be discussed in the design of traffic management systems, as well as the role of simulation in the evaluation of such systems.

Bio
Dr. Pitu Mirchandani is a professor in the School of Computation, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University. He also heads the ATLAS (Advanced Transportation and Logistics: Algorithms and Systems) Laboratory at ASU. Mirchandani earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an Sc.D. in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mirchandani has several areas of expertise and interests, including theories, models and algorithms in (1) networks, logistics, location and scheduling, (2) transportation engineering, and (3) real-time information and control systems. He has co-authored three books and authored or co-authored more than 100 articles in a variety of journals, magazines and books. He has been on the editorial boards of several major journals. He is a senior member of IEEE, a member of INFORMS, IIE, TRB, and a charter member of ITS-Arizona.

Submitted by Katherine Edwards, kedwards@tamu.edu

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