Transport modelling in the age of big data
International Journal of Urban Sciences, 21 (S1): 19-42, Abington: Routledge, 2017.
Dr Alexander ERATH
Main content
Principal Investigator of Engaging Mobility & Co-PI of Cognition, Perception, and Behaviour in Urban Environments
Alex leads the research project Engaging Mobility at the Future Cities Laboratory. Before, he coordinated FCL's research group Mobility and Transportation Planning and led in this role the implementation and further development of the large-scale, agent-based transport demand model MATSim Singapore. He obtained his PhD in 2011 from ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) where he studied the vulnerability of transport infrastructure. His main research interests are active mobility, the interaction between transport infrastructure and the built environment, travel behaviour, accessibility-based transport planning and multi-agent, activity-based transport demand modelling.
Research
Alex’s current research focus lies in bridging the gap between transport modelling and urban design to facilitate the planning for active mobility. In addition, he aims for making large-scale, agent-based transport demand models such as MATSim more accessible for planning practice. The goal is to make big data generated as output of such models accessible to end users such as transport planners and operators, urban planners and other potential stakeholders. To this end he and his colleagues at FCL designed a Decision Support System combines various datasets in a spatial database which is directly connected to MATSim whereas tailored business analytic software provides user friendly analysis. His vision is to replace the current approach of separated, only periodically updated urban datasets with a living digital urban model where data sets are continuously updated and statistically enriched.
Awards
VSS (Organisation of Swiss Road and Transport Professionals) award 2005 for best MSc thesis 2005 titled 'Value of travel times savings and location choice for shopping trips’
Exhibitions & Conferences
- Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies Conference 2013
- LTA-UITP Singapore International Transport Congress and Exhibition 2013
- Digital Art Week Singapore 2013
- Swiss Transport Research Conference 2011/2012/2013
- International Conference of Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies 2011/2012
- Conference of the International Association For Travel Behaviour Research 2012
- Asia-Pacific Conference on Systems Engineering 2011
- Urban Sustainability R&D Congress 2011
Education
Dr. sc. (PhD) ETH Zurich
MSc (Civil Engineering) ETH Zurich
Publications
Between abstraction and hyperrealism: Is there a right point?
Zürich: ETH Zürich, 2017.
Visualizing Transport Futures: the potential of integrating procedural 3d modelling and traffic micro-simulation in Virtual Reality applications.
FCL, Singapore ETH Centre, 2017.
Virtual Reality as a tool to assess perception of safety and comfort for cyclists in Singapore
GASS, 2017.
Visualizing Waypoints-Constrained Origin-Destination Patterns for Massive Transportation Data
Computer Graphics Forum, 35 (8): 95-107, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.
Using smartcard data for agent-based transport simulation
In Public Transport Planning with Smart Card Data, edited by Kurauchi, Fumitaka, and Jan-Dirk Schmöcker, 133-160, Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2016.
Bike to the future: Experiencing alternative street design options
Engaging Mobility, Zürich: ETH Zürich, 2016.
PTV Innovation Day in Singapore on 22th of July
Engaging Mobility, Zürich: ETH Zürich, 2016.
The fruits of this year’s TRB submission frenzy
Engaging Mobility, Zürich: ETH Zürich, 2016.
Singapore
In The Multi-Agent Transport Simulation MATSim, edited by Horni, Andreas, Kai Nagel and Kay W. Axhausen, 379-382, London: Ubiquity, 2016.