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Role of Emerging Mobility in SmartCities

94-858

Units: 6

Description

The modern built environment is becoming increasingly connected mainly through advancements in emerging mobility and communication technologies. These advancements have given rise to the concept of ‘smart cities’. While ‘smart cities’ include a broad array of concepts such as smart buildings, smart homes, smart grid and transportation, the course will focus on transportation as a prime example of connecting communities within the built environment and improving the quality of life. The emerging mobility technologies including automation, connectivity and electrification provide enormous benefits in terms of improving the operations and efficiency of transportation systems but also poses some critical policy and ethical issues. The course will provide graduates with opportunities for careers in transportation planning and policy.

Learning Outcomes

  • Develop an understanding of the role played by vehicle automation, connectivity, and electrification within smart cities and how these can be integrated.
  • Develop an understanding of various components of automated/connected vehicles and vehicle electrification. These would involve the description of basic components of automated vehicles such as LIDAR, vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication and sensing along with more advanced example application cases of these technologies such automated vehicles-based queue warning applications, cooperative driving automation, automation-based merging and types of alternative fuel vehicles involving battery electric vehicles, plugin, and non-plugin hybrids and shared mobility. These application case studies will be applied to existing problems within the city of Pittsburgh.
  • Develop an understanding of ethical issues arising due to increased connectivity/automation within smart cities and transportation. These ethical considerations would include privacy issues due to information and data exchange during V2V and V2I communication, cybersecurity vulnerability arising due to increased connectivity and their impacts, issue of range anxiety with electric vehicles etc.
  • Utilize a case study-based approach to assess policy decisions needed for promoting wider consumer adoption of these technologies and achieving the desired benefits of transitioning to low carbon economy and lower dependence on gasoline. The current pressing problems include policy decisions on safe headways between platooning vehicles, policy decisions on liability during a crash with automated vehicles, policy decisions on lane utilization or dedicated lanes for automated/connected vehicles, policy decisions on tax incentives and charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, theory of diffusion of innovations and considerations for increased cyber resilience.

Prerequisites Description

Basic Statistics or permission of instructor