The Anthropolis Chair is looking for a PhD student! (Position filled)

Title: Human Centered Urban Mobility – Synchronization for shared mobility in an uncertain environment

Based on the Paris-Saclay plateau south of Paris, IRT-SystemX acts as an accelerator of digital transformation. Centered on digital engineering of tomorrow’s systems, its research projects cover the scientific and technological needs of the transport and mobility, energy, digital security and communications industries. The research program Smart Territories aims at developing decision-making tools for the optimization and operational planning of the evolution of smart territories. The « Anthropolis » chair is investigating user centered eco-innovations in the context of urban mobility systems and their interactions with other urban systems. The main research area of the chair are novel mobility services in the context of multi-modal hubs involving eco-efficient modes of transport.
The Anthropolis Chair is jointly operated by IRT-SystemX and LGI (Laboratoire Génie Industriel) at CentraleSupélec. The industrial partners of the chair are Alstom, Engie, RATP, Renault, and SNCF.
The PhD Thesis will be performed at IRT-SystemX and LGI at CentraleSupélec within the doctoral school Interfaces of the Université Paris-Saclay.

Description of research work

The goal of this thesis is the design of a human centered approach for shared urban mobility. We consider the daily mobility of users that is based on multiple tasks (commuting, shopping, leisure, family …) to be fulfilled during a day. These tasks induce a mobility demand that needs to be fulfilled by a multi-modal transport system that is composed of a mix of public and private transport, shared mobility and others. In the future autonomous (most probably electric) vehicles will play a major role in such systems. We therefore include novel transport means and recharging operations in our considerations.
In addition such personal mobility may be combined and synchronized with the transportation of goods i.e. parcels could be picked up at a train station on the way home from work, or a grocery-order could be delivered into to the trunk of a shared-car at a local train station near the home location allowing the user to take the delivered items to his home on his routine way from work using the shared car.
Such a system is strongly dependent on the accuracy and reliability of the planning, uncertainties in travel-times and possible service interruptions etc. therefore need to be taken into account in the planning process. Methods for planning and operating such systems will be the main research topic of this thesis, taking into account the uncertainty of a realistic multi-modal urban transport network. The thesis will examine a-priori planning and dynamic optimization of trips and tours in such a system.

Required skills

Master degree in Operations Research or Computer Science or related discipline
Knowledge of heuristic and exact optimization methods
Knowledge of at least one programming language such as C++ or Java
Knowledge in transport optimization and GIS would be a plus

Informations

http://www.irt-systemx.fr/project/anthropolis/
http://www.lgi.ecp.fr/
https://www.universite-paris-saclay.fr/en/education/doctorate/interfaces