URBAN TRAVEL FORECASTING: A 50 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE
SPEAKER:
PROFESSOR DAVID BOYCE
Adjunct Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, USA
DATE:
15 DECEMBER 2011 (THURSDAY)
TIME:
19:00 - 20:00
VENUE:
WANG GUNGWU THEATRE, GRADUATE HOUSE, THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
ORGANIZED BY:
Institute of Transport Studies, The University of Hong Kong
ABSTRACT:
The field of urban travel forecasting in the United States began in the early 1950s, when the first urban transportation plan was prepared. Methods for forecasting urban travel developed quickly, in conjunction with the first mainframe computers available for civilian use, and were soon exported to Britain, Europe and beyond. Today, urban travel forecasting is a highly developed field of academic study within civil engineering, economics, geography, operations research, regional science and urban planning, and a primary focus of several academic and professional journals, organizations, societies and software development firms, as well as public agencies and consultants. In 2003, Professor Huw Williams and I began to prepare a history of this field, which examines the subject from three distinct perspectives: theory and practice; network analysis and discrete choice analysis; the United States and the United Kingdom. In this seminar, I shall present our principal findings and insights, and trace the history of the main developments by innovators and the context of their achievements, especially with respect to computers and software. Finally, I shall draw discuss what has not yet been achieved, and identify opportunities for future research and practice.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Dr. David Boyce, P.E., is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and Professor Emeritus of Transportation and Regional Science in the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering of the University of Illinois at Chicago. He presently conducts research on urban travel and location forecasting models, transportation network assignment methods, and the history of urban travel forecasting methods and practice. One of his long-term research interests concerns the formulation, implementation, estimation and validation of large-scale, integrated models of urban travel behavior, as an alternative to the traditional multi-step travel forecasting procedure. Professor Boyce was a tenured faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania (1966-77), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1977-88), and the University of Illinois at Chicago (1988-2003). In 2000 he was awarded the Founder's Medal of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) in recognition of his research achievements; in 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the RSAI. In 2003, he received the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award of the Transportation Science and Logistics Section of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He also received the INFORMS Fellows Award in 2003, and the Fellows Award of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2009.