This award is made under the Exploratory Research on Engineering the Transport Industries (ETI) program solicitation We propose to study transportation as complex adaptive systems (CAS). It is our intent to carry out exploratory research and analysis of various aspects of highway and road transportation systems. The topics for exploratory research and some of the methods used to analyze them are borrowed from many disciplines. They are as mentioned below: (1) The hidden order in apparently random daily urban highway traffic patterns based on algorithmic entropy (Kolmogorov entroy). (2) Connectivity of Transportation Network as a fractal dimension derived from river flow networks and fractal geometry models. (3) Accessibility and mobility based on site and bond percolation theory. (4) Emergence of long-term traffic patterns based on NK models of evolutionary biology. (5) Congestion as a second order phase change based on spin glass theory and emission as a collective outcome of distributed agents modeled after neural networks. (6) Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) and urban activities/transport systems based on models of self-organized criticality. We believe that the interdisciplinary research and analysis of transportation systems will offer insights into Complexity and Transportation fields. It is hoped that this would in turn spur interest in development of new traffic flow and transportation models that address the issue of how micro level interactions give rise to macro level behavior and the phenomenon of phase change.
