Scientific Award 2009

PTV AG invited scientists from all over the world to submit their innovative contributions for the second PTV Vision Scientific Award. From the 14 entries involving the use of the PTV Vision modules VISUM or VISSIM for innovative research projects, the three best were rewarded.

This years' winner of the EUR 2,500 prize is Professor Guide Gentile from the University of Rome. He developed the new algorithm LUCE (Linear User Cost Equilibrium) which revolutionised the earlier traffic assignment procedures by improving the runtime, convergence and path proportionality. This means that transportation planners can now perform the most-used modelling calculations in practice more quickly and efficiently.

The second place was given to Denis Zenkov from the Transport and Telecommunication Institute in Riga with the development of a procedure for automatically calibrating simulation parameters. With his work on the variability of simulation results, Zeeshan Raza Abdy, postgraduate at the University of Waterloo in Canada, was able to gain third place. Guohoi Zhang from the University of Texas at Austin also won third prize. He analysed the impact of dynamic tolling for special lanes using an add-on module for VISSIM which he also developed for this research project.

Dr.-Ing. Peter Vortisch, coordinator of the prize at PTV, said of the entries: "It was particularly important for us that we reward entries that not only contain a purely scientific quality, but also display a real effect in practice."