IWCTS 2024 Workshop - GenAI and Smart Mobility

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The 17th International Workshop on Computational Transportation Science (IWCTS 2024) features a Smart Mobility track that addresses the increasing relevance of human mobility data. With the widespread use of cell phone probe data, connected automated vehicles, volunteered geographic information, and other sensing and simulation sources, there is unprecedented access to detailed mobility data. This wealth of information is being integrated into smart city frameworks and mobility management systems, driving significant advancements in intelligent transportation systems, building information management, human dynamics modeling, and urban planning. The computational intensity of managing and analyzing these large-scale datasets underscores the critical role of advanced computational and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in these developments. The recent emerging Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technologies, such as the Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), have created further opportunity to revolutionize the existing applications of intelligent transportation system towards more intelligent and autonomous AI agents for more optimized and efficient urban mobility management.
We will build upon the success of previous workshops to continue to focus on the computational and informatics approaches for (not limited to):
  1. Smart City Operations:: Resiliency during extreme weather events (e.g., floods, tornadoes, etc), Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs), Building Information and Energy Modeling (BIM/BEM), electric grid management, decision support, and optimization.
  2. GenAI for Mobility: Generative deep learning techniques, such as Generative adversarial networks (GANs), Variational autoencoder, and LLMs, for analyzing, augmenting, and retrieving mobility data.
  3. Infrastructure Sensing: Digital Twin technologies, urban sensing infrastructure, edge computing, ad-hoc mobile sensing and computing, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and cyber-physical systems.
  4. Human Dynamics Analysis: Modeling and simulation of population and freight movements, dynamic routing algorithms, computational traffic flow models and control algorithms, and the role of transportation in the smart city.
  5. Intermodal Transportation System: Simulation and analysis on the transportation and logistics of large-sized cargo in freight containers through two or more modes of transport (e.g., maritime, air, railroads, and highways).
  6. Cyberinfrastructure: Web-based platforms, software, or smartphone apps developed to facilitate (a) the acquisition, management, and sharing of mobility apps, (b) the sharing and coupling of traffic and mobility simulations, and (c) the delivery of smart mobility services for improving the quality and safety of the transportation system.
We welcome research papers from computer sciences, geosciences, geographic information science, transportation sciences, urban sciences, social sciences and other related sciences which address the above-mentioned focus areas. We will be organizing a panel alongside paper presentations / keynote. We seek to invite eminent people from industry, academia, and laboratories. We are offering IWCTS awards to the presentation and paper with the top quality and impact.

Smart Cities: Safe Road Solutions Using Low-cost Smart Phones and Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Yi-Chang James Tsai
Prof. Yi-Chang James Tsai

ABSTRACT: Over a quarter of all fatalities are curve related. This is a high-priority societal challenge in the US. The MUTCD (Manual on the Uniform Traffic Control Devices) (FHWA, 2012) requires various horizontal alignment warning signs (curve signs) and adequate advisory speed to ensure curved roadway safety. However, the majority of local transportation agencies (counties and cities) have not yet met the MUTCD requirements. In addition, the current practice for assessing the MUTCD compliance of existing curve warning signs requires a lot of effort to manually inventory existing signs, and measure and verify their sign type, placement, and spacing. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a low-cost solution since the majority of local transportation agencies with limited resources cannot afford the current practice. This talk will present a cost-effective curve safety assessment methodology and technology application, using smart phone and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, developed through a competitively selected research project sponsored by the National Academy of Science (NAS) National Cooperative Highway Research Innovation Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) program and the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). A cost-effective method has been developed for automatic curve sign design and MUTCD-compliant checking using low-cost mobile devices, AI and crowdsourcing technologies with a test performed on 26 miles of State Route 2 in GDOT District 1. The developed technology can also help transportation agencies to identify and prioritize the roadways for safety improvements, like High Friction Surface Treatment (HFST) with benefit-cost analysis.

BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Yichang (James) Tsai is a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and also an adjunct professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (CEE) at Georgia Tech. He is currently the group leader of Construction and Infrastructure Systems Engineering (CISE) in CEE at Georgia Tech. Dr. Tsai’s research focuses on applying sensing technologies (3D laser, Lidar and smart phone technologies), computer vision, AI, and GIS spatial analysis to 1) automated pavement condition evaluation and asset management, 2) transportation safety, 3) vehicle energy-emission reduction and 4) safe mobility of aging population. Dr. Tsai has developed and successfully implemented the complex, large-scale, GIS-based, Risk-based Georgia Pavement Management System (GPAMS) for the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). GDOT has used this system to assess, preserve, and manage its 18,000 centerline miles of highway over the past 20 years. Dr. Tsai’s research project received the 2017 AASHTO High Value Research Award, a national award in the US, because of its innovation and successful implementation of an automatic pavement condition evaluation method using 3D laser and AI technologies. Since 2010, he has served as the Associate Editor of ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering.

The 17th International Workshop on Computational Transportation Science (IWCTS 2024)

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Program

08:30-08:55 : Breakfast

08:55-09:00 : Opening Remarks

09:00-09:30 : Keynote Speaker
Professor. Yi-Chang James Tsai Georgia Institute of Technology

09:30-09:50 : Development of Emergency Vehicle Preemption Strategies on Smart Corridors in a Digital Twin Environment
Somdut Roy, Michael Hunter, Abhilasha Saroj, and Angshuman Guin Somdut Roy, Transportation Planning West - AtkinsRéalis, Denver, Colorado; Michael Hunter, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia; Abhilasha Saroj, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Angshuman Guin, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia

09:50-10:10 : OSM Ticket to Ride
Wenzel Friedsam, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria; Tobias Rupp, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

10:10-10:30 : Clustering-Based Enhanced Ant Colony Optimization for Multi-Trip Vehicle Routing Problem with Heterogeneous Fleet and Time Windows: An Industrial Case Study
Beom Sae (Shawn) Kim, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Arash Mozhdehi, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Yunli Wang, National Research Council, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Sun Sun, National Research Council, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; Xin Wang, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

10:30-10:50 : Towards Pareto-optimality with Multi-level Bi-objective Routing: A Summary of Results
Mingzhou Yang, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA; Ruolei Zeng, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA; Arun Sharma, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA; Shunichi Sawamura, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA; William F. Northrop, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA; Shashi Shekhar, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA

10:50-11:00 : Coffee Break

11:00-11:20 : Airport Delay Prediction with Temporal Fusion Transformers
Ke Liu, University of California Berkeley; Kaijing Ding, University of California Berkeley; Xi Cheng, University of Illinois Chicago; Guanhao Xu, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Xin Hu, University of Michigan—Ann Arbor; Tong Liu, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Siyuan Feng, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Binze Cai, Georgia Institute of Technology; Jianan Chen, University of British Columbia; Hui Lin, Northwestern University; Jilin Song, University of Toronto; Chen Zhu, Tsinghua University

11:20-11:40 : Embedding Transportation Knowledge Graphs for Enhancing Traffic Prediction Models
Md Mobasshir Rashid, University of Central Florida; Samiul Hasan, University of Central Florida

11:40-12:00 : Conversational Geographic Question Answering for Route Optimization: An LLM and Continuous Retrieval-Augmented Generation Approach
Jose Tupayachi, University of Tennessee, USA; Xueping Li, University of Tennessee, USA

12:00-12:10 : Closing Remarks



Organizers

Dr. Jinghui Yuan R&D Staff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Femi A Omitaomu Senior R&D Staff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Dr. Guanhao Xu Advanced Mobility R&D Staff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Dr. Haowen Xu Research Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

Computational Urban Sciences Group (CUSG), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)


Program Committee

IWCTS has developed an engaged community happy to support this workshop. We will go back to the PC members of previous workshops. Previous year’s workshop had an excellent number of 14 PC members. We will go back to the PC members of previous workshops as well as involve other experts in the field to expand the IWCTS community. The following PC members have already confirmed their availability:
Dr. Jibonananda Sanyal National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Dr. Ambarish Nag National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Dr. Qichao Wang National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Dr. Joe Severino National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Dr. Andy Berres Research Scientist, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Dr. Chieh Ross Wang Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Tim LaClair Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Gautam Thakur Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Jackeline Rios Torres Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Wan Li Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Abhishek V Potnis Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Rajesh Paleti Amazon
Dr. Xiao Li University of Oxford

Prof. Xiao Huang University of Arkansas
Prof. Husain Aziz Kansas State University
Prof. Vikash Gayah Penn State University

PAPER SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. The following paper categories are welcome:

  • Full papers (up to 10 pages): Original, unpublished research papers which belong to the scope of the workshop, i.e. computational transportation science and are not being considered for publication in any other forum.
  • Short papers and Position Papers (up to 4 pages): Papers describing the early research results on original work on computational transportation science. Authors must clearly state the ongoing and future work and the relevance of the results presented in the context of the scope of this workshop.
  • Demo Papers (up to 4 pages): Describing original systems for demonstration/presentation at the conference.

Papers must be in ACM SIG format (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template) (US Letter size, 8.5 x 11 inches) including text, figures and references. Accepted papers will be published in the ACM digital library under the condition that at least one author has registered for both the main SIGSPATIAL conference and the workshop, attends the workshop, and presents the accepted paper in the workshop. Otherwise, the accepted paper will not appear in the workshop proceedings or in the ACM Digital Library version of the workshop proceedings.

Please submit your papers to - https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iwcts2024

Camera-ready Paper Submission

There are three important things to make sure while preparing the camera ready papers for the workshop:

  1. Authors must address all the comments and concerns from the reviewers.
  2. Authors must follow the instructions for preparing the camera ready paper 
  3. Providing copyright to ACM.

Deadline for submitting Camera-ready paper is September 1th, 2024.

Step-by-step procedure:

  1. Obtaining copyright block to be included in the camera-ready paper
    1. IWCTS workshop organizers have sent the metadata of the accepted papers to ACM for collecting copyright from authors
    2. Authors of workshop papers will receive the instructions for electronically sending the copyright release forms to acm. Let us know if you won't hear back from ACM by Oct 12. 
    3. Authors have to send copy-right form to ACM following the instructions.
    4. Authors will receive the confirmation e-mail from ACM including the correct ACM copyright block they have to edit in their camera-ready paper.
  2. Prepare and finalize the camera-ready paper and send them following the instructions they receive from the workshop organizers. The following is the checklist before you submit the final version:
    • a) is paper in PDF format?
    • b) is page size US-Letter 8.5x11?
    • c) is correct copyright block present with ISBN/YY/MM and copyright fee?
    • d) is the correct location, year present in copyright block?
    • e) ensure that there are no page numbers
  3. Submission of the Camera-ready paper: We have enabled the link on the easy chair submission portal to update the submission. You can upload the camera-ready paper there. For any reason, if you are not able to upload the camera-ready paper. You can send it to this email:iwcts@ornl.gov

Please direct any questions regarding Camera-ready submission to  iwcts@ornl.gov

  • Paper Submission Due: September 1th, 2024 11:59pm PDT (AoE)
  • Review Deadline: September 15th, 2024
  • Notification to the Authors: September 25th, 2024
  • Camera Ready Papers Due: October 2nd, 2024
  • IWCTS Workshop: October 29th, 2024
  • ACM SIGSPATIAL Conference: October 29th – November 1th, 2024