Thesis supervisor: János Tóth
Location of studies (in Hungarian): Department of Transport Technology and Economics Abbreviation of location of studies: KUKG
Description of the research topic:
a) Antecedents:
According to the last United Union report, in 2019 the world population reached about 7.7 billion people and by 2030 it will reach 8.5 billion people, while in 2050, the forecast is accounting 9.7 billion people in the world. It is expected the developing regions will present the largest increase, while in developed ones, the population is narrowly growing. All the future growth of the world’s population is expected to be absorbed by urban areas (United Nations, 2018). Rapid urban growth presents an important opportunity, but it also poses challenges to the implementation of an ambitious urban development agenda that seeks to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
To meet the challenges of sustainable development, a multitude of actions and initiatives emerged that favored the increase and performance of legal controls, international agreements, environmental certifications, among others. Evidently, that the company within this new configuration, responded to these pressures with management practices and investments in cleaner technologies.
Urban development is accompanied by a number of problems, such as traffic jams, violence and pollution. Pollution in urban centers has become one of the most obvious problems to be faced in the spheres of quality of life in cities and also in the preservation of the natural environment. The high emission of toxic pollutants into the atmosphere, in addition to the degradation of natural forest and water resources, are some of the main challenges to be overcome.
Opting for bicycle as a transport mode will contribute in preserving the environment, once the greenhouse components will not be emitting to the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases block the outflow of solar radiation, which is not absorbed by nature and which should normally return to space. However, this heat mass remains in the atmosphere causing global warming.
Unfortunately, in several countries, besides the pollution and lack of infrastructure that make cycling difficult in many urban environments, the violent/crime rate has also shown itself as an obstacle for cycling.
b) Aim of the research:
The aim of the research is to come up with a mathematical model in order to describe how violence withing urban limits interfere on the level of cycling of the population. Data about social index, number of homicides, size, fleet, infrastructure, number of cyclists and other factors will be analyzed and clustered in order to develop the model
Future Assessments tool:
Survey and Travel Behavior Assessment: with a survey it will be possible to map and determine the feature and characteristics of cyclists and their travel behaviors in order to understand the obstacles and the groups existing in the area of the research.
Mode choice modelling: mode choice models will be used to analyze and predict the choices that individuals or groups of individuals make in selecting the transportation modes that are used for types of trips, depending on the time and safety. The goal is to predict the share or absolute number of trips made by mode which an important objective in mode choice modeling is to predict the share of trips attracted to public transportation, but in this case related to urban mobility.
Macroscopic transport modelling: A Macroscopic traffic flow model, which is a mathematical traffic model that formulates the relationships among traffic flow characteristics and it will be used to integrate microscopic traffic flow models and convert the single-entity level characteristics to comparable system level characteristics. This method may be primarily classified according to the type of traffic as homogeneous and heterogeneous, and further with respect to the order of the mathematical model.
State Preference Method: which is to reduce choices under uncertainty to a conventional choice problem by changing the commodity structure appropriately. The state-preference approach is thus distinct from the conventional "microeconomic" treatment of choice under uncertainty. In its reliance on states and choices of actions which are effectively functions from states to outcomes.
Utility Function: It will be used to measure preferences over a set of goods and services, representing the satisfaction that consumers receive for choosing and consuming a product or service, in this case, bicycles instead of other means of transportation. Utility is measured in units called utils but calculating the benefit or satisfaction that consumers receive from is abstract and difficult to pinpoint. As a result, it is usually measured in terms of revealed preferences by observing consumers' choices. From there, it is possible to create an ordering of consumption baskets from least desired to the most preferred.
Transport Economics: with all the mentions above, transport economics will be used to analyze and study the movement of people and goods over space and time. This branch of economics will deal with the allocation of resources within the transport sector. Historically, it has been thought of as the intersection of microeconomics and civil engineering, as shown on the right. The topics associated with Transport Economics will include privatization, nationalization, regulation, pricing, economic stimulus, financing, funding, expenditures, demand, production, and externalities.
c) Required equipment:
A computer laboratory and all software of the department are available for research purposes.
d) Expected scientific results:
Mathematical Model describing how violence/crime rates in urban environment affects level of cycling in a future smart city. Once the model is created, it will be applied and validated.
2 papers in the journals with Impact Factor that are registered in Web of Science database
2 conference papers published in international conference proceedings
f) Literature: scientific papers in the following topics: cycling, mathematical model, violence and cylcing, traffic survey, analysis of travellers’ behaviour, support of decision-making, multicriteria analysis, etc.
Required language skills: English medium level Recommended language skills (in Hungarian): French or German basic level Further requirements: good knowledge (comprehensively and in details) in informatics and practical use of VISSIM software
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