CTS Events
SEMINAR
November 14, 2012

Dr. Nebiyou Tilahun, UPP, presents a seminar entitled "An agent based model of origin destination estimation (ADOBE)" Wednesday, November 14th at 4:00 pm in Rm 1127 SEO

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SEMINAR
November 7, 2012

Mr. Thomas Murtha, CMAP, will address the CTS-IGERT community at 4:00 p.m. in Room 1127 SEO.

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SEMINAR
October 24, 2012

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Bo Zou, CME, on Wednesday, October 24th, Room 1127 SEO, 4:00 p.m.

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CTS Happenings
September 25, 2012

Award Received by Joshua Auld, CTS-IGERT alumnus.

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April 20, 2012

Congratulations to James Biagioni, CTS Fellow and CS PhD candidate, winner of the Dean's Scholar award.

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January 2, 2012

James Biagioni, CTS Fellow, receives "Best Presentation Award" at SenSys2011

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July 30, 2010

Dr. Ouri Wolfson, Dr. Phillip Yu, and Leon Stenneth, CS student and CTS Associate, recently had a paper accepted to the 6th IEEE International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob 2010).

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October 24, 2012

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Bo Zou, CME, on Wednesday, October 24th, Room 1127 SEO, 4:00 p.m.

Dr. Bo Zou will present a seminar entitled "Optimal 4-D Aircraft Trajectories in a Contrail Sensitive Environment".

Abstract:
Aircraft induced contrails present an important source and a growing concern for climate change in the aviation sector. This paper develops a methodology to determine optimal flight trajectories that minimize the total flying cost in a dynamic, contrail-sensitive environment. The total flying costs consist of costs due to fuel burn, crew, passenger travel time, CO2 emission, and contrail formation. By constructing a multi-layer hexagonal grid structure to represent the airspace, we formulate the single aircraft trajectory optimization problem as a binary integer program that allows for flight altitude and heading adjustment, and contrail information update. Various cost factors are quantified, in particular the one corresponding to aviation-generated contrails, using the Global Warming Potential concept. Computational analyses show that cost-minimizing flying strategies do not always choose to completely avoid forming contrails. Optimal trajectories depend critically upon the climbing fuel burn rate and the time horizon choice for calculating the CO2 climate impact. Shifting flights to periods with low contrail effect is not justified, given the limited benefit but large passenger schedule delay cost increase. We extend the analyses to multiple flights using a successive optimization procedure. We find that both flight schedule and the relative geographical location of the origin/destination airports affect the sensitivity of optimal trajectories to the presence of contrail formation areas. Flights may choose to fly more circuitous routes to reduce or eliminate the formation of contrails. While delaying on the ground can be an alternative option, it seems much less popular than adjusting en-route trajectories. Given the nature of the successive optimization procedure, changes in travel time and cost for individual flights are not always monotonic.

Biography:
Bo Zou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering. He graduated as a PhD inTransportation Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in May 2011. His main research interests include transportation systems analysis, transportation economics, policy and planning, sustainable transportation, and infrastructure management, with previous applications to the aviation and waterborne shipping sectors. Prior to pursuing his PhD at Berkeley, he obtained his M.S. and B.E. degrees from Tsinghua University in China in 2007 and 2005, and a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from the Ecole Centrale de Nantes in France in 2007.