The Institute for Transport Studies of the University of Leeds is offering two PhD opportunities for EU candidates interested in ITS. These are very rare studentships which cover both fees and maintenance for all EU students, unlike many other schemes (e.g. RCUK) which only pay maintenance for non-UK students.
Topic 1: An EU-China Multi-Modal Modelling and Simulation tool for Logistics Applications
Driven by economic considerations, the transport network between Europe and Asia (in particular China) has recently received sustainable investment. Such development is currently accelerating. One case is so-called “The Silk Road Economic Belt” which covers a number of railways and trunk roads across the continents, for example, Hamburg–Zhengzhou, Duisburg–Chongqing and Chengdu–Lodz. These lines are over 10,000 km long but take about 13 to 17 days to complete. Another development is on “the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road” which covers two maritime routes (i.e. Coastal China – South China Sea – Indian Ocean – Europe; and Coastal China – South China Sea – South Pacific). These initiatives can surely stimulate economy development at the local, regional and global levels. The expended transport network could, however, bring in environmental and social impacts to the areas involved if the traffic flows are not properly managed in the network, especially at the nodes (e.g. ship-ship, ship-rail, rail-road etc.), which will cause delays, costs and pollution.
The WTO data on trade volumes and trends show that international maritime operators have significantly expanded capacity to meet demand from shippers and this has resulted in sustained levels of double digit annual growth in the number of full containers leaving Asia. As volumes have risen, congestion in main container ports and inland transport hubs has increased delays and transportation costs, and underlined a need for minimising delays due to a number of factors (e.g. intermodal transfer and unloading, missed connection between railroads, locating misplaced containers at the terminal) and for automated data handling and corrective and preventive action for deviation management.
Topic 2:Review of Design Manual for Roads and Bridges For Fully Autonomous Vehicles
The Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB) provides standards, advice notes and other guidance relating to the design, assessment and operation of trunk roads, including motorways in the United Kingdom. Volume 6 is concerned with road geometry including links and junctions. It was designed for human drivers, and also many theories and equations for the design were derived from field surveys carried out many years ago.
