Open PhD Position: “CulturalRoad” project, European Commission Horizon Europe Framework Programme (TSE 127)

Description of the Chair

The Chair of Transportation Systems Engineering (TSE) undertakes research in the transportation field with a specific focus on modeling and simulating transportation systems, implementing data science and data analytics in transport and human factors analysis, and machine learning and deep learning. The TSE chair researches multimodal and unimodal freight and passenger transport demand and supply modeling, allowing for contributions to the optimization, calibration, and validation of transport models. In this direction, the application of big data acquisition and analysis and the use of flexible data-driven models are examined. The TSE chair also contributes to analyzing human factors in transport-related fields such as road safety modeling, behavioral economics applications, and modeling of factors that affect user engagement in transportation systems. 

Project description

The transport sector generates several negative externalities and is one of the few economic sectors that have not seen a significant decline in emissions (EU transport emissions). Accordingly, the European Commission indicated Connected Cooperatives as a strategic asset to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations and reduce mobility's negative environmental impacts on the environment. However, different countries have proposed different Connected, Coordinated and Automated Mobility (CCAM) implementation strategies and guidelines so far. In the long run, this unsynchronized deployment effort will inevitably undermine the effectiveness of CCAM systems due to geographical, cultural, and even legal differences across countries. The project CulturalRoad aims to solve this problem by developing new guidelines for CCAM implementation that intrinsically consider diversity in all its aspects. The project will be delivered by a large consortium of academic and industry partners led by the European Road Transport Telematics Implementation Coordination Organisation, Brussels, BE. The pilots include Catalunya (ES), Karlsruhe (DE), Ljubljana (SL), West-Midlands (UK) and Eilat (IL). 

 

In the project, TUM is leading the work package that delineates the cultural, geographical, and exogenous diversity factors that significantly shape the planning, design, development, and implementation of CCAM solutions in the European context. This includes a review of the existing standards, laying the requirements, including the data requirements, extracting and interpreting the comprehensive needs and requirements of the CCAM users, developing a two-step co-creation framework, and ascertaining the ethical and legal aspects of mobility equity. In addition, TUM will also lead the tasks of developing the methodology, which will be designed to assess the inclusivity of the CCAM-based solutions and the use of simulation tools for future scenario development. Besides, TUM will also work on other topics led by the other partners involved in the project. 

 

Prof. Dr. Constantinos Antoniou will supervise the PhD researcher at TUM. As this is a collaborative research project delivered by a consortium of academic and industry partners, the TUM PhD candidate will participate in regular joint meetings and formal workshops virtually and in person. 

Requirements

Conditions of Employment

Following the Public Sector Collective Agreement of Länder (TV-L), TUM offers a competitive compensation package. This position is a 100% TV-L 13. More information on the offered wages can be found at https://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tv-l/allg/.

TUM is an equal-opportunity employer. Qualified women are particularly encouraged to apply. Applicants with disabilities are treated with preference, given comparable qualifications.