University of Coimbra, Portugal
December 06, 2012, 11:00, Room GC B3 424 (click here for the map)
The strategic decisions with regard to the investments in transportation infrastructures usually involve large amounts of money. Therefore, decisions should be carefully analyzed. Cost-benefit analysis, usually based on trial-and-error approaches, does not allow the full exploration of the solution space. This can only be done using optimization techniques. This talk will give an overview of the work developed by the author on the usage of optimization approaches to solve strategic transportation investment planning problems. The different approaches will be illustrated with the application to several case studies, including the definition of national/regional road network plans and the location of freight intermodal terminals in Belgium.
Bruno F. Santos is an Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He finished is PhD in 2009 on the topic of Transportation and Spatial Planning, in a collaboration between the University of Coimbra and the University of Toronto, Canada. He had published several works on transportation planning topics and has been involved, besides other research initiatives, in the MIT-Portugal research and teaching program.