Prospective students
Apply online to any of UB's Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Graduate programs
Maria Koliou
Pursuing Ph.D. Structural and Earthquake Engineering
Here I have the opportunity to work with faculty famous in the field of Structural and Earthquake … more
Transportation Systems Engineering
Projects
Overview
Aerial Photograph of UB North Campus
Using TRANSIMS to Model University Campuses Transportation Networks
Studying transportation systems of University campuses offers several interesting research opportunities as well as challenges. On one hand, a university campus transportation system can be regarded as an excellent, micro-scale example of regional transportation systems. On the other hand, university campuses have their distinct features that typically do not receive adequate attention when modeling larger scale networks, including the multi-modal nature of the trips, the distinct trip making characteristics, and the challenges of providing for adequate parking. A review of the literature reveals that there have been a limited number of studies that specifically focused on issues related to transportation on university campuses, and that most of these studies have addressed the issues from a qualitative manner rather than from a rigorous modeling approach. The purpose of the proposed research is to evaluate the feasibility of using the TRANSIMS model to model transportation on college and university campuses, as well as investigate how the model can be best adapted to model such environments. As a case study, we will consider the transportation system of the North campus of the University at Buffalo (UB) - State University of New York. The UB North campus is located in Amherst, NY and occupies an area of over 1,192 acres and has over 146 buildings. The project will implement both a track 1 and a track 2 implementation of TRANSIMS, document the challenges of the implementation and devise methods to overcome them.
