Speaker: Alexandr Vinel (Auburn University)
Title: Modeling on-demand public transit modes: A Markovian continuous approximation approach
Date: February 14, 2025
Time: 13:30
Place : EA409
Abstract
With recent advances in mobile technology, public transit agencies around the world have been actively experimenting with new transportation modes, many of which can be characterized as on-demand public transit. Design and efficient operation of such systems can be particularly challenging because they often need to carefully balance demand volume with resource availability. The talk will discuss a family of models for on-demand public transit that combine a continuous approximation methodology with a Markovian process. Our goal is to develop a tractable method to evaluate and predict system performance, specifically focusing on obtaining the probability distribution of performance metrics. This information can then be used in capital planning, such as fleet sizing, contracting, and driver scheduling, among other tasks. We will discuss two variants of the model: one for an on-demand last-mile vehicle and one for a flex-route bus service. We will also review some computational experiments and a case study, based on a real-world pilot on-demand public transit project in a major U.S. metropolitan area. We will then outline connections between the developed modeling approach and more general methodologies, such as semi-Markov models, and how continuous approximation ideas can improve the applicability of such techniques in future research.
Bio Alexander Vinel is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Auburn University, Alabama, USA. He has received the Fulbright Senior Scholar award to spend the Spring 2025 semester at the Bilkent Industrial Engineering department. He joined the Auburn ISE department in 2015 after completing a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Iowa. Dr. Vinel also holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. His research and teaching interests focus on stochastic operations research and optimization, such as methodologies for measuring and optimizing risk and approaches to data-driven optimization. Some specific applications of interest include stochastic models in transportation systems, portfolio optimization to reduce intermittency in renewable energy, data analytics in additive manufacturing and optimization for occupational safety. His research has been funded by National Science Foundation (NSF), Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC). Dr. Vinel serves as an Area Editor for peer-reviewed academic journal Computers and Operations Research. He is a co-author on the publication selected for the Best Paper Award for the journal Ergonomics in 2021.