Symmetry and Asymmetry in Transportation Engineering and Optimization
A Special Issue of Symmetry (ISSN 2073-8994) belonging to the section "F: Engineering and Materials".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2027 | Viewed by 99
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Symmetry and asymmetry are fundamental characteristics of transportation systems and play an important role in transportation modelling, operation, safety assessment, and optimization. Symmetric structures or relationships may appear in balanced traffic flows, bidirectional networks, reciprocal interactions, and equivalent operational conditions, whereas asymmetry commonly arises from directional demand, heterogeneous users, uneven infrastructure, temporal variations, environmental disturbances, and differences in system capabilities. Identifying and properly modelling these characteristics can provide a deeper understanding of transportation system behaviour and improve the effectiveness of engineering and management decisions.
This Special Issue, entitled “Symmetry and Asymmetry in Transportation Engineering and Optimization”, aims to present recent theoretical, methodological, and practical advances in the analysis and optimization of symmetric and asymmetric transportation systems. Topics of interest include transportation network design, traffic flow modelling, routing and scheduling, multimodal transportation, logistics optimization, intelligent transportation systems, and data-driven decision making.
Particular attention is also given to safety-related asymmetries, such as unequal collision risks, non-reciprocal interactions among vehicles or vessels, heterogeneous operational environments, and spatially unbalanced risk distributions. In maritime transportation, for example, differences in vessel manoeuvrability, encounter geometry, traffic density, navigational rules, and autonomous system capabilities may lead to significant asymmetries in collision risk and avoidance behaviour. The integration of artificial intelligence, risk modelling, and intelligent optimization therefore offers promising approaches for traffic-state characterization, risk prediction, early warnings, and decision support.
This Special Issue welcomes original research articles, reviews, and case studies that contribute to the understanding, modelling, optimization, and management of symmetry and asymmetry in transportation engineering.
Dr. Zihao Liu
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Symmetry is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- symmetry and asymmetry
- transportation engineering
- transportation optimization
- traffic flow modelling
- transportation network design
- intelligent transportation systems
- maritime traffic safety
- collision risk assessment
- AIS data mining
- autonomous transportation systems
- risk prediction and early warning
- data-driven optimization
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