Disruption management in railway networks

Institute for Transport Studies research seminar with speaker Professor Francesco Corman, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich.

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A major problem of public transport, and railways in particular, is to improve quality of operations by updating an offline timetable to the ever changing delays situation, in order to improve performance of the transport system. In railway systems, this relates to reduce train delays by reordering retiming or rerouting trains, and/or change connection plans and route advised to passengers, to improve their traveltime.

Key point of research is the interaction between the problem (of the infrastructure manager) to reschedule trains, and the problem (of the travellers) to find the optimal route in the network. In fact, changing passenger flows, respectively delaying trains and/or dropping passenger connections, varies the setting under which the two decision makers respectively interact. The interaction of the two decisions makers is mediated by the information one decision maker has about the other, and the service which is offered/used. We report different methods to address this dilemma, by agent-based simulation.

Bio: Professor Francesco Corman holds the chair of Transport Systems at the Institute of Transport Planning and Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He has a PhD in Transport Sciences from TUDelft, the Netherlands, on operations research techniques for realtime railway traffic control. He has academic experience at KU Leuven, Belgium and TUDelft as research associate in transportation and logistics. Main research interests are in the application of quantitative methods and operations research to transport sciences, especially on the operational perspective, public transport, railways and logistics.

Institute for Transport Studies Research Seminar Series: Our seminar series is for anyone interested in the latest transport research. Presented by members of the Institute and guest speakers, the programme is designed to stimulate cross-disciplinary conversations across a range of transport and mobility research areas. The short seminars will be followed by a discussion. The remainder of the session will be a chance to meet up and network. No booking required.