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Post graduate fellowship for transportation modeling in EU

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2002 8:16 am
by Bob Eberlein
Hi Everyone,

I received a note about a post graduate fellowship available to look at
transportation and economy interactions in Italy that might be of
interest. This is open to people living in the EU. I have included
some information here. More details will be available from (I dont
think this has been posted there yet)


http://improving-mcf.sti.jrc.it/project/

If you are interested please contact (dont reply to me or the list):

Angelo Martino
TRT Trasporti e Territorio
Piazza Arcole 4
I-20143 Milano
Tel +39 02 58105855
Fax +39 02 58107634
martino@TRTtrasportieterritorio.it
www.TRTtrasportieterritorio.it



Core project title:

System Dynamics Model of Italy for strategic transport assessment

Job description

Research on strategic assessment of transport investment and policies in
Italy. The aim of the research is to enhance a System Dynamics model of
Italy in order to improve its capability to simulate the complex
interaction of the transport sector with the society, the environment
and the economy. The core of the activity will be in the System Dynamics
Modelling field and the research will develop an advanced application
based on Vensim software by means of improvements of the existing model
of Italy. Other than a technical background in advanced modelling, with
specific experience in System Dynamics, the ideal candidate should be
accustomed to work in an multidisciplinary team (modellers, economists,
statisticians, etc.) and have an attitude to deal with the complex
fields of applications at stakes. English shall be the working language.

Project Description

System Dynamics can support exploring complex impacts of transport on
economic development and environmental sustainability.
The research project is based on the System Dynamics approach followed
in ASTRA, the European project led by IWW of the University of Karlsruhe
in the IV framework for R&D in transport (1997–2000). Further to
successful completion of the ASTRA prototype, TRT was requested by
Federtrasporto – the transport branch of the Association of the Italian
industrialists – to implement the ASTRA-Italia model to explore long
term sustainability of transport policies and investment in Italy
(2000-2001).
ASTRA-Italia will form the basis for the further R&D work necessary to
improve the performance of the System Dynamics Platform in handling
specific feedback mechanisms and identifying sustainable paths in
transport and economic growth.
The research activity will also benefit from the on-going TIPMAC project
(2001-2003, V Framework programme for R&D in transport), led by
Cambridge Econometrics, in which the outcome of the European ASTRA model
will be compared with E3ME-SCENES models’ for the assessment of the
macroeconomic impacts of European transport policies


In the ASTRA-Italia System Dynamics strategic transport model to be
further developed, mobility prediction is the result of a complex
interaction process among four different components: transport, economy,
land-use and environment. The tool is then capable to illustrate
the reciprocal influences among transport and ecological and socio-
economic systems. As an example, the links between passenger and freight
mobility and the economic performance are bi-directional, which means
that feed-back effects are simulated showing how modifications
in the economic performances might reinforce (or alternatively dampen)
the transport development and viceversa.

To explore sustainable paths, the model produces a great variety of
quantified indicators including variations in: GDP, employment, private
consumption, tax revenues, transport performance (pkm and tkm), modal
shift, vehicle fleet development, traffic emissions, fuel consumption.
Monetary value are also estimated for external costs.

The spatial representation of the four modules - transport, economy,
land-use and environment - is very different and then the common spatial
representation in ASTRA-Italia is based on a combination of macro-regions
- aggregations of the 20 Italian administrative regions - and
functional zones - clusters of the 90 Italian administrative provinces
according to different settlement types. The transport system is
represented by distance bands (separately for passenger and freight),
which consider different modal choice alternatives and different driving
patterns in dependency of the trip length.

From: Bob Eberlein bob@vensim.com