The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden
June 09, 2010, 11:00, Room GC B3 424 (click here for the map)
As the recent volcanic blockade of European air travel shows, disruptions in the transport systems can have severe impacts for affected individuals, businesses and the society as a whole. In the research presented here, vulnerability is seen as a combination of the severity and the frequency of unplanned system disruptions, with a focus on large, rare events. I will describe model-based studies of different aspects of vulnerability, in particular the dichotomy of system efficiency and user equity, applied to the Swedish road network. The scenarios studied include both closures of single road links and disruptions of extended areas. I will also address the issue of how to value the delays that are incurred by network disruptions and, using an activity-based modelling approach, I illustrate that these delay costs may be considerably higher than the ordinary value of time, in particular the first few days after the event when travel conditions are uncertain.
Erik Jenelius received the M.Sc. in Engineering Physics at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, in 2004. From June 2005 to January 2006 he worked for the City of Stockholm with the evaluation of the Stockholm congestion pricing trials. Since February 2006 he is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Division of Transport and Location Analysis, KTH. He is working in a project concerning road network vulnerability analysis, the main aim of which is to develop the methodology for vulnerability analyses with application to real large-scale road networks. In 2008 he received the Lic.Eng. degree in Infrastructure from KTH. His research interests include road network vulnerability, critical infrastructure protection, transport reliability, transport economics and complex networks.