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Toward Sustainability: Transportation System Evaluation and Optimization

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2023) | Viewed by 6619

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly, 38334 Volos, Greece
Interests: transportation planning; transportation system design; intelligent transportation systems; behavioral modeling; intermodal transportation; logistics; multicriteria evaluation and optimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In an era of radical geospatial and technological changes, transportation systems are asked to deliver high-quality service while preserving the environment, enabling economic development and ensuring high living quality standards. Smart solutions for the accommodation of people’s and goods’ movements, coupled with the ability to measure real-time performance and tools developed for the optimization of systems’ operation are the means to improve transportation systems, in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability.

Electrification encounters climate change when allied with the use of renewable energy sources, while sharing and autonomous systems introduce new concepts in transportation potential. The growth of technology has resulted in an avalanche of available and highly active data at low cost. To transform data into value, traditional statistical methods need to be adjusted or new techniques and algorithms need to be developed, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Numerical methods, simulation, and multiple criteria analyses enable decision-making and transportation system optimization.

This Special Issue focuses on the latest research conducted in the field of evaluation and optimization of transportation systems, taking into account the trends in people’s mobility and goods movements. Its aim is to present findings about the sustainability of revolutionary transportation paradigms and highlight validated methodologies applied for their measurement, assessment, and evaluation. It covers topics related to the sustainability pillars (transportation, economy, environment, society) and enablers (satisfaction, acceptance, adoption, uptake). Both original research and review papers are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Eftihia Nathanail
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • Data digitization
  • Data analytics
  • Transportation modeling
  • Simulation
  • Impact assessment
  • Multiple criteria evaluation
  • Optimization
  • Decision making
  • Business models

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

30 pages, 4592 KiB  
Article
A Fuzzy Cognitive Map and PESTEL-Based Approach to Mitigate CO2 Urban Mobility: The Case of Larissa, Greece
by Konstantinos Kokkinos and Eftihia Nathanail
Sustainability 2023, 15(16), 12390; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151612390 - 15 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1975
Abstract
The CO2 reduction promise must be widely adopted if governments are to decrease future emissions and alter the trajectory of urban mobility. However, from a long-term perspective, the strategic vision of CO2 mitigation is driven by inherent uncertainty and unanticipated volatility. [...] Read more.
The CO2 reduction promise must be widely adopted if governments are to decrease future emissions and alter the trajectory of urban mobility. However, from a long-term perspective, the strategic vision of CO2 mitigation is driven by inherent uncertainty and unanticipated volatility. As these issues emerge, they have a considerable impact on the future trends produced by a number of exogenous and endogenous factors, including Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal aspects (PESTEL). This study’s goal is to identify, categorize, and analyze major PESTEL factors that have an impact on the dynamics of urban mobility in a rapidly changing environment. For the example scenario of the city of Larissa, Greece, a Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) approach was employed to examine the dynamic interactions and behaviors of the connected criteria from the previous PESTEL categories. An integrative strategy that evaluates the interaction of linguistic evaluations in the FCM is used to include all stakeholders in the creation of a Decision Support System (DSS). The methodology eliminates the uncertainty brought on by a dearth of quantitative data. The scenarios in the study strands highlight how urbanization’s effects on sustainable urban transportation and the emergence of urban PESTEL actors impact on CO2 reduction decision-making. We focus on the use case of Larissa, Greece (the city of the CIVITAS program), which began putting its sustainable urban development plan into practice in 2015. The proposed decision-making tool uses analytics and optimization algorithms to point responsible authorities and decision-makers in the direction of Larissa’s sustainable urban mobility and eventually the decarbonization of the urban and suburban regions. Full article
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14 pages, 1993 KiB  
Article
Based on AFC Data Calculation of Walking Time in Metro Stations Considering the Impact of Passenger Flows
by Liang Zou, Suiying Hu and Lingxiang Zhu
Sustainability 2023, 15(8), 6660; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15086660 - 14 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1745
Abstract
The walking time in metro stations is influenced by passenger flow with large fluctuation. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of station walking time calculation considering the influence of passenger flow: firstly, the time, entry, and exit direction and volume distribution characteristics of [...] Read more.
The walking time in metro stations is influenced by passenger flow with large fluctuation. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of station walking time calculation considering the influence of passenger flow: firstly, the time, entry, and exit direction and volume distribution characteristics of station passenger flow are analyzed, and the threshold of passenger flow that affects walking time is defined; then, an entry and exit walking time calculation model is established by five independent travel time chains and three station walking time constraints, and the transfer walking time is calculated based on the entry and exit walking time results; finally, the accuracy and validity of the walking time projection model are verified by using the calculation results. The results show that the calculation results are accurate and the validity of the model reaches 91.5%, and the constraint effect on walking time at station time is most obvious when the passenger flow reaches 3000 passengers per 30 min. Full article
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24 pages, 3061 KiB  
Article
Factorial Design with Simulation for the Optimization of the Level of Service in the Platform-Train Interface of Metro Stations—A Pilot Study
by Matias Kulczewski, Andres Wilson, Sebastian Seriani and Taku Fujiyama
Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 15840; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315840 - 28 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1287
Abstract
Metro stations are considered complex areas of pedestrian mobility due to the increasing congestion, due to the a high level of demand of different circulation spaces. Given this situation and the limited physical spaces remaining to develop transport systems in urban areas, railways [...] Read more.
Metro stations are considered complex areas of pedestrian mobility due to the increasing congestion, due to the a high level of demand of different circulation spaces. Given this situation and the limited physical spaces remaining to develop transport systems in urban areas, railways acquire greater relevance given the need to mobilize pedestrians. Within the stations, the most problematic area is the platform-train interface (PTI) due to the high number of interactions between passengers boarding and alighting. The objective of this study is to identify the PTI configuration that maximizes the level of service for passengers, safeguards the operational continuity of the system and improves user experience by reducing dissatisfaction and delay times. For this, a pedestrian microsimulation model is used in order to recreate the reality of a generic metro station and its different scenarios given the combinations of two factors: the platform configurations (topology) and the traffic control elements. Subsequently, these scenarios are analyzed through a factorial design, looking for the situation that optimizes the combination of metrics chosen in a weighted way. Finally, it is found that the PTI configuration that maximizes the level of service for users is the mixed station with signaling. It is this which includes the factors with the greatest positive effect on the chosen metrics. Full article
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