In Loving Memory of - Morgan State University

2His Research PhilosophyI believe that transportation engineering provides us with an excellent platform to studyhow technology, science, humanity and social sciences interact. Mobility is one of theessential requirements for human activity. The present state of our cities and our way oflife depend very much on the way that transportation systems were developed over theyears. The shape and functions of the city are also changing dynamically with thetransportation systems. The study of transportation helps us understand the complexphenomena that underlies between mobility and socioeconomic activities of the people.Because the study of transportation deals with complex phenomena, organizing thecause-effect relationships systematically is essential. My approach to transportation is todevelop a sound reasoning base for proposed solutions by learning from the pastphenomena combined with the principles of economics, physics, mathematics, socialsciences, and the culture of the region. The aspect of dealing with incomplete knowledgeand incomplete data when making inferences is my current research interest. In manyinstances, the answer can lie between yes and no, and the unknown must be recognized.In other words, how to express what we know and what we do not know in an honestand forthright manner and to measure the strength of reasoning is my general theme ofresearch in transportation.Within this framework, I study the relationship between information and decision whenplanning urban transportation systems, Intelligent Transportation Systems, logistics, anddevelopment of transportation policies. My current research topics includeunderstanding the data needs for planning and operations of public transportation,development of simulation models for traffic flow both for automobiles and humanactivities, and measuring the quality and value of information. Further, most recently Iam interested in the idea of the agent based system, in which individual elements whichcomprises of a system has desires and “life” of its own. The elements may be differentstakeholders and interest groups. Instead of the top-down optimization, using thebottom-up approach in which the individuals play to maximize its own utility, onemight be able to see an organized pattern of the behavior of the entire system. The use ofthis concept has allowed me to formulate the traditional optimization topics oftransportation in the multi-objective context by considering the desires of individualsystem elements, which may yet be not completely certain.Traditionally in transportation engineering, uncertainty is addressed in the probabilisticframework. In the past two decades, a significant advance has been made to systematizethe approaches to uncertainty in Systems Science. Under this larger framework, differenttheories have emerged to deal with different types of uncertainties. Since transportationdeals not only with the statistical information but also with perception, desires,incomplete data, natural language, visual images, etc., and since the nature ofpropositions is not always well defined, the truth of a proposition needs to be analyzedcarefully, consistent with the type of data and the type of proposition. One of theimportant challenges facing civil engineers today is accountability. I want to advocateproper treatment of uncertainty in a scientifically credible manner in the process ofprediction, diagnosis, and control/regulation.3