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The implications of major investments in transportation infrastructure and services require careful evaluation in order to assess the true benefits and costs of initiating specific regional development policies. Whether applied locally, regionally, or nationally, effective decision-making begins with sound estimates of the current and future demand for such facilities and services. This includes the estimation of trip purpose and land use-specific passenger and freight trip frequencies, origin-to-destination trip volumes, facility specific travel costs, and their associated levels of traffic congestion. ORNL has extensive expertise in developing and applying spatial decision support systems to such traffic forecasting and associated infrastructure investment studies. This expertise spans and often combines statistical and econometric modeling with micro-simulation and optimization methods, and has been applied across all of the major modes of transportation (highway, rail, water, air, pipeline, intermodal), and at the local and large regional as well as fully national scale. This includes traditional transportation planning studies as well more specialized uses of similar methods and models, notably in regional evacuation studies, hazardous materials routing studies, and in critical link analysis studies in support of threat mitigation and other network security objectives. Recent projects have made contributions to the development and application of more accurate and comprehensive benefit-cost analysis frameworks, and to the study of traffic congestion, notably around major intermodal passenger and freight terminals. In support of these generally applied studies recent theoretical research has focused on developing new methods for tracing domestic and international freight movements through complete product supply chains. ORNL has also been a national leader over the past three decades in developing, adapting, applying and disseminating a set of national and North American multimodal transportation network databases. Use in made of the latest GIS tools in developing decision support software.
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Planning
and Systems Analysis - Research Staff
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| Primary Contact: Frank Southworth | |
| Ingrid
Busch Shih-Miao Chin Randy Curlee Sujit Das Oscar Franzese Steve Gordon Glen Harrison |
Mike
Hilliard Ho-Ling Hwang Bruce Peterson Rick Schmoyer Tykey Truett Demin Xiong |
Focus
Areas:
1.
Multimodal National and International Transportation Network Representations
2. Multimodal Traffic Routing Studies and Congestion Analysis
3. National and Regional Traffic Estimation and Forecasting
4. Regional Network Investment and Design Studies
5. Alternatives Analysis: Decision Support Tools
6. Regional Evacuation Modeling and Simulation
7. Sustainable Transportation Studies
8. Urban and Regional Transportation Planning Methods and Models
9. Direct and Indirect Benefit-Cost Analysis
10. Network accessibility, robustness and vulnerability analysis.
Recent
Work (in 2002)
Projects
for the US Army Corps of Engineers, 2002:
Enhancement
and Validation of the Ohio River Navigation Investment Model
Estimation
of the Economic Impacts of Improved Waterway Access for the Great
Lakes and St Lawrence Seaway.
Assessment
of Lock Transit Curves for Use in Analyzing Traffic Congestion
at Upper Mississippi and Illinois River Locks.
Projects
for the Federal Highway Administration, 2002:
National
Freight and Passenger Network Flows and Transportation System Capacity
Analysis (with Battelle Memorial Institute).
Projects
for the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2002
Mode-Distance
Computations for the 2002 US Commodity Flow Survey
Projects
for the Tennessee Department of Transportation (Office of Public
Transportation):
Assessing
The Future Demands for and Measuring The Benefits of Public Transit
in Tennessee.
National
Science Foundation Project:
Enterprise-wide
Simulation and Analytical Modeling of Comprehensive Freight Movements
(with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst).
Some
R&D Software Products (and principal sponsoring agency):
National
Highway Planning Network Version 1.0 (DOT)
ORNL/MOBCON
National Highway Routing Network (DOD)
Multimodal
North American and Trans-Global Truck-Rail -Waterway Commodity
Flow Network (DOT)
INTERLINE
National Rail Traffic Routing Algorithm (DOE)
MOBCON
(Mobilization Control) Convoy Traffic Routing System (DOD)
National
VMT Forecasting Models and National, Multimodal Freight Traffic
Activity Estimates (DOT)
MIO-
US and Canadian Ports and Counties Maritime Interregional Input-Output
Model (DOD)
NETPEM
-- HOV lane simulation and evaluation software (DOE)
IDAS
- ITS Deployment Analysis System (Project Management) --- MPO sketch
planning software for benefit-cost analysis of ITS projects (DOT).
HNDES
- Highway Network Design and Evaluation System (DOT)
ORNIM
- Ohio River Navigation Investment Model (DOD)
OREMS
(Oak Ridge Evacuation Modeling System) (FEMA, DOD)
DYMOD
dynamic traffic assignment model for use in evacuation simulations
(FEMA)
DELTA:
Dynamic Ecological Land Tenure Analysis (micro-simulation) model
(DOE )
Statewide
Public Transit Benefits Spreadsheet (Tennessee DOT)
IBET – Intermodal
Bottleneck Evaluation Tool (for the United States) (DOT)