INTERMODAL: INcreasing Transportation Efficiency and Resiliency through MODeling Assets and Logistics
SPONSOR: ARPA-E
BY: Northwestern University Transportation Center and Vanderbilt
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS: Hani S. Mahmassani (formerly), Pablo Durango-Cohen, Craig Phillip (Vanderbilt), Hiba Baroud (Vanderbilt), Ahmad Taha (Vanderbilt), Paul Johnson (Vanderbilt)
The Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) was competitively selected for a $2.2 million INTERMODAL grant by the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) of the U.S. Department of Energy. Led by Hani Mahmassani and Pablo Durango-Cohen, in collaboration with Craig Philip (Vanderbilt University), the project aims to reimagine the nation's multi-modal freight transportation system with the objective to improve its performance in terms of economic and service measures and assess opportunities to leverage new energy technologies.
The team is developing an online, open-source, interactive dashboard that provides analytical tools to optimize multimodal freight transportation, evaluate logistics routing, simulate intermodal facility operations, and assess energy infrastructure deployment. The Imagined Dashboard has 5 tools:
- Freight Flows Visualization - provides forecasts for freight flows and commodity market trends based on mode, origin-destination, and forecast year.
- Logistics Routing - optimizes alternative routes to minimize shipment costs, emissions, and travel times while improving reliability.
- Multimodal Network Optimization - determines optimal locations for multimodal transfer facilities and freight routing on the national network.
- Intermodal Facility Simulation - simulates facility operations and evaluates the impact of alternative energy technologies on multimodal transfer processes.
- Energy Infrastructure Deployment (NUFRIEND) - simulates the deployment of new energy technologies across U.S. freight rail networks, estimating emissions reductions and investment costs.
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