Our lab members Sadullah Goncu, Gorkem Akyol, and Dilay Melisa Agkoc gave a “Cooperative Vehicle Dynamics and Intelligent Transportation Systems” seminar at the ITU MTAL high school in Istanbul, Beşiktaş. Within the seminar program, our lab members introduced ITU ITS Lab and ongoing research efforts to the students, followed by sharing our findings from our ongoing TUBITAK 1001 project, titled “Effects of Cooperative Vehicle Dynamics in Traffic Flow Modeling: Simulation and Control,” to raise awareness among high school students on traffic safety, planning, and intelligent transportation systems.

Our lab member Sadullah Goncu attended with papers the 33rd IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV2022) that is held on Jun. 04-09, 2022 in Aachen, Germany. Within the program of IV2022, Sadullah presented two papers: one, titled 'Analysis on Effects of Driving Behavior on Freeway Traffic Flow: A Comparative Evaluation of Two Driver Profiles Using Two Car-Following Models', on a number of findings from our ongoing TUBITAK 1001 project, titled 'Effects of Cooperative Vehicle Dynamics in Traffic Flow Modeling: Simulation and Control'; and, the other on the preliminarly findings from our newly initiated project, titled 'Congestion-Aware Modeling of On-Demand Mobility Systems: Simulation & Optimization of Autonomous Mobility on Demand Services through Tarihi Yarimada, Istanbul Case'.

Our lab members Dr. Mehmet Ali Silgu and Sadullah Goncu attended with papers the 18th International Conference on Computer Aided Systems Theory (EUROCAST2022) that is held on Feb. 20-25, 2022 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. Within the program of EUROCAST2022, Mehmet Ali presented presented a number of findings from our recently finalized TUBITAK 1001 project, titled 'Environment Friendly Optimization of Transportation Networks: Analysis Over Small Sized Real Network', while Sadullah's presentation summarized preliminarly finding from the sensitivity analyses conducted through our ongoing TUBITAK 1001 project, titled 'Effects of Cooperative Vehicle Dynamics in Traffic Flow Modeling: Simulation and Control'. Abstracts of both papers, titled 'A Methodology to Consider Explicitly Emissions in Dynamic User Equilibrium Assignment' and 'Sensitivity Analysis for A Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Car Following Model: Preliminary Findings', can be accessed through EUROCAST2022 web site.

Having succesfully defended his doctoral dissertation, titled 'Effects of Cooperative Vehicle Dynamics on Traffic Flow Control', in Fall 2021, our lab member Mehmet Ali Silgu is awarded the PhD degree. Dr. Silgu will continue his scientfic research at our lab.

Our lab members, Hazal Akova and Selin Hülagü attented to the 24th Euro Working Group on Transportation Meeting (EWGT 2021) which is orginazed by Universidade de Averio as virtual event between 8th and 10th  of September. Within the program of EWGT2021, Hazal Akova has presented the paper titled "Static bike repositioning problem with heterogeneous distribution characteristics in bike sharing systems" she co-authored, in which the Static Bike sharing Rebalancing Problem (SBRP) with multiple capacitated vehicles for redistribution of bicycles is addressed in order to proposed a sustainable bike sharing system that meets within-day demand dynamics in a metropolitan city. Within her presentation, Hazal also discussed the results from solutions to the SBRP through a real case network. 

Having succesfully defended his thesis, titled 'Cooperative vehicular systems and freeway traffic control applications: a method for cooperative merging in freeway traffic', in Spring 2021, our lab member Ismet Goksad Erdagi is awarded the MSc degree. Goksad, as a teaching assistant, will continue his PhD research in PITTS Lab at the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the Swanson School of Engineering, at University of Pittsburgh, directed by Prof. Stevanovic.

The 7th International IEEE Conference on Models and Technologies for Intelligent Transportation Systems (MT-ITS2021) to be held on 16-17 June 2021 at Crete, Greece is realized as a virtual event. Within the program of the MT-ITS2021, our lab member Hazal Akova presented the paper, titled "Effects of energy consumption on cost optimal recharging station locations for e-scooters", she co-authored, in which Recharging Station Locating Problem with Energy Consumption is presented where vehicle motion dynamics based energy consumption model is incorporated with a location model, in order to determine the remaining battery load considering the 3-Dimensional road geometry, as well as e-scooter and road surface characteristics. Results of the real case study reveal that, with distance-based energy consumption, recharging station requirement may be under or overestimated according to the energy consumption rate considered.

The 16th IFAC Symposium on Control in Transportation Systems (CTS 2021) was held in Lille, France on June 8-10, 2021 as a virtual event. Our lab members Gokhan Goksu and Mehmet Ali Silgu presented the papers entitled "Integral Input-To-State Stability of Traffic Flow with Variable Speed Limit" and "H∞ State Feedback Controller for ODE Model of Traffic Flow". In "Integral Input-To-State Stability of Traffic Flow with Variable Speed Limit", a variable speed limit controller is proposed to ensure integral input-to-state stability of the traffic state by using saturated feedback whereas, in "H∞ State Feedback Controller for ODE Model of Traffic Flow", an H∞ state feedback controller for freeway traffic flow is applied as an integrated freeway traffic flow management scheme through coordination of ramp metering and variable speed limit.

Within the seminar series of ITU ITS Research Lab and ITS course in Fall 2020, Dr. Omer Verbas, a member of the Vehicle and Mobility Simulations Group at Argonne National Laboratory, US gave an invited talk on 'Modeling Future Mobility Impacts Using POLARIS Agent-based Transportation Simulator'. Dr. Verbas' talk covered the POLARIS simulation of large-scale transportation systems involving activity based demand and network supply models, and findings from a number of telecommuting scenarios run to figure out the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on transit share.

Within the seminar series of ITU ITS Research Lab and ITS course in Fall 2020,Ibrahim Ethem Demirci, who is the R&D and Engineering Services Manager at TCDD Technic Engineering and Consulting Joint Stock Company, gave an invited talk on 'Energy Efficient Train Operations'. Mr. Demirci's talk focused on the utilization of regenerative braking energy in timetable optimzation of subway systems.

Within the seminar series of ITU ITS Research Lab and ITS course in Fall 2020, Dr. Mehmet Yildirimoglu, a faculty member of the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland, Australia gave an invited talk on 'Large-scale urban network modelling, estimation and control'. Dr. Yildirimoglu's talk covered the macroscopic fundamental diagram based large-scale modeling and perimeter control for network traffic flow.

Within the seminar series of ITU ITS Research Lab and ITS course in Fall 2020, Prof. Javier Sanchez-Medina, a member of the Department of Computer Sciences and Systems at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, gave an invited talk on 'Data Stream Mining in ITS'. Prof. Sanchez-Medina's talk covered the big data analysis and data stream mining applied to intelligent transportation systems, with theoretical background and real case studies. 




  

The FORUM on Integrated and Sustainable Transportation Systems (FORUM-ISTS2020)to be held on 30 June - 02 July 2020 at Delft, Netherlands is realized as a virtual event on 03-05 November 2020. Within the program of the FORUM-ISTS2020, our lab member Selin Hulagu had presented the paper, titled "Electrified Location Routing Problem with Energy Consumption for Resources Restricted Archipelagos: Case of Buyukada", she co-authored at the 'S1-3.2 - Electric Vehicle Transportation Systems - (Transportation electrification)' session. The feature of the study summarized in the presentation concamtrates on formulating an Electrified Location Routing Problem using mixed integer linear programming by realistically calculating the battery load considering explicitly the driving resistances and the potential regenerative braking.

This year, the SUMO User Conference with the theme 'From Traffic Flow to Mobility Modeling' had been realized as a virtual event on October 26-28, 2020. Within the program of the SUMO User Conference 2020, our lab member Sercan Akti presented the paper, titled "A Mathematical Programming Based Approach to Evaluate Ramp Metering Deployment Through Eclipse SUMO", he co-authored, in which an approach to decide whether or not to control ramps is proposed through a mathematical program formulation and micro-simulation at Eclipse SUMO.

The 23rd IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC2020) to be held on September 20–23, 2020 in Rhodes, Greece is realized as a virtual event. Within the program of the ITSC2020, our lab member Mehmet Ali Silgu presented the paper, titled "A Game-Theoretical Approach for Lane-Changing Maneuvers on Freeway Merging Segments", he co-authored, in which an integrated system that organizes longitudinal and lateral movements with the intention of mitigating shockwaves due to merging maneuvers at freeways is proposed. The system makes use of a car-following theory based cooperative adaptive cruise control model for longitudinal motion modeling, while vehicles approaching to the merging zone are controlled using a speed harmonization algorithm and, in cases of zone conflicts, a merging strategy that is based on the game theory is applied for flow management.

The 23rd EURO Working Group on Transportation (EWGT 2020) is held on September 16–18, 2020 in Cyprus in  hybrid format with both physical and virtual presence at the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence (KIOS CoE), University of Cyprus. Within the program of the EWGT2020, our lab member Selin Hulagu presented the paper, titled "Comparative evaluation of macro and micro approaches to emission modeling using GPS data: a case study", she co-authored, in which to evaluate daily emissions from shuttle vehicles serving a university campus area in a ring-based fashion, different emission calculation methods in terms of the scale, i.e., macroscopic and microscopic, is employed using GPS trajectory data is obtained on site by measurements.

The 3rd Symposium on Management of Future Motorway and Urban Traffic Systems (MFTS2020) to be held on 06-08 July 2020 in Luxembourg at the University of Luxembourg is realized as a virtual event. Within the program of the MFTS2020, our lab member Ismet Goksad Erdagi has presented the paper, titled "A Cooperative Merging Approach with Speed Harmonization", he co-authored, in which the merging performance of vehicles with and without coperative adaptive cruise control is investigated employing a shockwave mitigation approach.

Having succesfully defended the theses in Spring 2020, our lab members Selin Hulagu and Sercan Akti are awarded the MSc degree. Selin has defended her thesis titled 'Energy Optimized Electric Vehicle Location Routing Problem with Intermediate Nodes' on July 02, 2020. On the same day, Sercan has defended as well his thesis titled 'An Integrated Decision Making Framework for Analyzing Environmental Sustainability of Road Transport: Case of a School Bus Fleet Serving to a Complex Urban Area'. Both will continue the PhD research in our Lab.

With her thesis titled 'Energy Optimized Electric Vehicle Location Routing Problem with Intermediate Nodes', our lab member Selin Hulagu has been ranked 3rd in the Graduate Research Poster Day activity organized by the Department of Civil Engineering at theTechnical University of Istanbul (ITU).

Within the schedule of the ITS course in Fall 2019, a technical visit to the Seyrantepe Campus of Metro Istanbul Inc. took place. Following a brief given by the Engineering Services Manager in charge, the control & operation center of the M2 Yenikapi-Haciosman Metro Line and the studios & garages of the periodical and overhauling maintenance services for the rolling stock fleet have been introduced to the course registrants together with our lab members. Vehicle maintenance with specific focus on axles at gear studios has been demonstrated, following an overview to the software and hardware used for rail traffic control & management instructed by the staff in charge.