ETC 2023 Awards

The Jacobs Award for the Paper Demonstrating the Most Innovative Use of Data.

The winner of the “Jacobs award for the paper demonstrating the most innovative use of data” was the paper titled “An Integrated Framework of Social Media Opinion Mining and Category System to Analyse Public Opinion Towards Transportation Technology and Services” by Katherine Cai Xuefen from the Land Transport Authority of Singapore. We went through an extensive selection process to pick out this excellent paper as the winner.

In our shortlisting, we were firstly looking for papers that were using innovative and new datasets, whether that was social media posts, CCTV data or apps collecting opinions on certain topics. We then focused on what techniques were applied to that data, concentrating on advanced statistical methodologies, such as, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Finally, we then considered the study holistically, assessing how innovative it is and how impactful it can be to the transport industry.

We selected this paper as the winner because it impressed the judges at each stage of the selection process. This study used social media posts, collected using social media mining by unsupervised machine learning models, with the aim to collect data on people’s opinions on autonomous vehicles. The social media posts are categorised from “very positive” to “very negative” which not only shows the volume of social media mentions, but also paints a picture of how well received autonomous vehicles are by the public. The outcome of this study is proving to be promising and can be extended to the field of transportation operations or policy-making to understand user perceptions towards the AV, user adoption and acceptance over time and to identify areas for improvements. 

In our shortlist, there were some impressive papers that made the final choice very difficult. Several papers demonstrated really innovative use of data, however, it was the unique data collection technique and its potential to improve and expand in the future that made us choose this paper as the winner.

Katherine Cai Xuefen

Xuefen has more than 15 years of work experience in LTA and had contributed in the field of traffic design and management, ITS development, ITS standards, data quality, governance & management and business intelligence analytics. She had been involved in several transport computational science research such as the social media sentiment analysis and topic modelling on users’ perceptions towards autonomous vehicles, data fusion techniques (LSTM and multiple linear regression algorithm) and free-flow speed estimation techniques (maximum-likelihood estimation) in ITS. She is also an Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES) Chartered Engineer (Transportation).

The Neil Mansfield Award

The Neil Mansfield award is given in the name of a brilliant young researchers in the UK DfT who passed away at a young age. The prize is awarded for the best paper written by an author under the age of 35y.o.

The winner of the Neil Mansfield award 2023, at the 51^st ETC is for Jamie Ward for the paper:  “A route-level analysis of factors affecting the relationships between bikesharings and public transport in central London: integration, complementation and substitution”. This paper was a great case study in the city where public transport does have a very high demand, and cycling has been growing rapidly in the recent years. Very interesting analysis and very well-structured paper.

(Pictured left to right: Fulvio Silvestri, Alba Dejuana, Jamie Ward & Orgerta Zeqo)

Jamie is a Transport Planner at Ramboll, based between London and Cambridge, with a breadth of UK and international experience developing sustainable transport strategies and masterplans; supporting planning applications for mixed-use developments particularly in the healthcare, research and education sectors; and appraising transport infrastructure. He is focused on providing sustainable transport solutions which meet the needs of all users, through the application of his proficient analytical, critical thinking and collaboration skills. Jamie also recently completed a Masters in Transport Planning at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, where his dissertation research focused on the relationships between bikesharing and public transport in London.

Jamie is competent in the development of Transport Planning reports, policy and literature reviews, data analysis and visualisation (Python, QGIS, ArcGIS), and microsimulation modelling (VISSIM). Moreover, Jamie has experience in strategic highway modelling (SATURN) and economic appraisal (COBALT, TUBA) in line with TAG; and has produced business cases for major transport schemes following the Treasury's five case model.

The Young Researchers' and Practitioners’ Forum (YRPF) would like to also give an honourable mention for the Neil Mansfield award to Alena Fischer & Franziska Henkel for their paper "Integrated consideration of the social and ecological dimension of the mobility transition: Barriers and constraints to use sustainable transport systems for people at risk of poverty". This paper was a great study in barriers for people at risk of poverty and inclusivity is a highly requested and appreciated topic. It brought up many interesting results. For this, we would like to give an honourable mention for the great work. 

Session Sponsored Awards

There is the potential for more awards to be sponsored.  The award criteria is set by the sponsor in agreement with the Chair of the relevant Programme Committee.

For ETC 2023, Jacobs will sponsor an award for the paper showing the most innovative use of data. The winner of the award gets a cash prize of EUR 350 or GBP 350.

For ETC 2023, Goudappel will sponsor an award for the best paper written for and presented in the Planning for Sustainable Land Use and Transport seminar. The winner of the award gets a cash prize of EUR 350 or GBP 350  The award is administered by the Planning for Sustainable Land Use and Transport programme committee.

Awards at the ETC 2022

The Goudappel Award

The Goudappel award is for the best paper written for and presented in the Planning for Sustainable Land Use and Transport seminar. The winner of the award gets a cash prize of EUR 350 or GBP 350 and the award is administered by the Planning for Sustainable Land Use and Transport programme committee.

Selection Process

 By the programme committee sixteen papers were selected. These papers meet the following selection criteria:

• have been received by 5 September 2022
• fit clearly within the Planning for Sustainable Transport and Land Use theme
• have been well presented at the European Transport Conference 2022, including through defence of /expansion on the topic through the Q&A session.

Paper assessment

The jury consisting of four people scored all papers based on three criteria:

• Quality of the paper itself: clearly and logically
• Added value for the topic Planning for Sustainable Transport and Land Use. The paper shows progress thinking and knowledge within the area of the topic concerned, through innovation or advancement in the area of theory, methodology and or practical

• Transferability and relevance for policy development. The paper demonstrates that the content discussed is transferable to the wide range of contexts within Europe with reference to practical application in policy development and to implementation through planning

Best paper

Based on the scores five papers clearly were seen as candidates for the award. In a separate meeting these five papers were discussed by the jury. Based on these discussions the jury came unanimously to one winner. The winner of the Goudappel Award 2022 is:

“A method for economic benefits for re-allocating road space for cyclists”

by Goktug Tenekeci, Jacobs UK

The paper “A method for economic benefits for re-allocating road space for cyclists” was well researched and an excellent example of using a well-established methodology in new application. The developed and applied methodology for assessing costs and benefits of cycle schemes contributes sustainable transport policies. And the presented approach is transferable towards other regions and countries. Overall a very good paper and well written.

The jury: Wim Korver (Chair), Doina Olaru, Farshid Kamali and Marie José Olde Kalter

Winner of the Goudappel Award:

Goktug Tenekeci is a Divisional Director at Jacobs UK, with over 25 years' research and practical experience in Transport Planning, Appraisal and Modelling. Goktug holds a Projects’ Director role at Jacobs and actively conducts  research in transport appraisal with numerous publications. He is engaged in scheme development, using analytical tools for modelling transport and environment, developing Transport Scheme Appraisal and funding  which are in line with international policies for net zero, economic assessment, strategic fit, land use integration and Sustainability. He has graduated from Eastern Mediterranean University and completed his MSc and PhD at Leeds University.

The Jacobs Award for the paper demonstrating the most innovative use of data

Winner Announced!

A novel approach to developing LGV trip matrices for the second generation of regional traffic models

By Reza Tolouei of AECOM UK, Arwa Sayegh of AECOM UK and Mia-Jade Thornton of National Highways

The paper excelled in multiple dimensions considered, starting from the problem it seeks to tackle, accuracy of LGV travel patterns in Regional Traffic Models, being well-defined, pragmatically-sized and valuable. Second, the study approached the various sections of the issue with novel and innovative data processing approaches. Finally, the methodological framework developed holds promise of a potentially noticeable increase in accuracy of highway models

Winners of the Jacob Award:

	Reza Tolouei is a Technical Director at AECOM UK, with over 17 years' experience in Transport Modelling (both research and practice), with a PhD in Transport Studies and a strong analytical background. He is particularly specialised in strategic transport model development and application, data analytics and innovative use of emerging data sources, statistical modelling techniques with transport applications, multimodal demand modelling, and travel behaviour studies.
	Arwa Sayegh is an experienced data scientist and machine learning specialist with around 10 years of experience in private sector consultancies, public sector, and research institutes. She has worked in multinational companies in the UK and abroad on projects with major clients from the Middle East, Canada, and the UK. For the past five years, she has been working on Telecom and Telematics data analytics projects and products. Arwa is currently working with Virgin Media O2 on enhancing their analytics power and their real-time location and transport product offerings.
	Mia-Jade Thornton is currently working as a Senior Transport Planner within the Transport Planning Group for National Highways. With 10 years of experience within the Transport Planning Industry, Mia specialises in transport modelling and appraisal. She is a specialist both in microsimulation modelling and strategic highway modelling, working across a plethora of projects of all sizes, invaluable experience which allowed her to co-lead the National Highways Matrix Technical Consistency Group for the development of the 2nd Generation Regional Traffic Models.

The Neil Mansfield Award

Winner Announced!

The Young Researchers' and Practitioners' Forum (YRPF)  are very pleased to announce the winner of the Neil Mansfield Award.

The award is given in the name of Neil Mansfield, a brilliant young researcher in the UK Department of Transport, who died at a young age. The prize is awarded for the best paper written by an author under the age of 35.

Francesco De Fabiis (Politecnico di Milano) together with Alessandro Mancuso

Winners of the Neil Mansfield Award for the paper: Spatial Regression Analysis To Assess Economic Impacts Of Transport Infrastructure

Winner of the Neil Mansfield Award:

Francesco De Fabiis is a Ph.D. Candidate and assistant lecturer in Transportation Planning at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Mechanical Engineering (DMEC). His research is related to innovative transportation planning approaches, focusing on transportation appraisal tools and methods. He has been involved in the Association for European Transport (AET) since 2020, and he is also a Member of the Doctoral Training Network (DTN) of the EIT – Urban Mobility.

Alessandro Mancuso is a Mobility Engineer graduated at Politecnico di Milano. He gained experience in the transportation planning field in Switzerland, working on sustainable mobility projects at the urban scale. He’s currently inbound coordinator at Samsung SDS, Milano.

EIT Award

Urban air mobility is an upcoming reality in Europe.

EIT Urban Mobility has acknowledged the research efforts on the topic by awarding a prize to one of the papers on urban air mobility presented during the European Transport Conference. The winning team from Polimi and University of Rome Tor Vergata has been awarded with the publication of an article in our Journal of urban mobility. Congratulations to:

Pierluigi Coppola 

Fulvio Silvestri 

Francesco De Fabiis 

Luca Barbierato 

EIT Urban Mobility Award

EIT Urban Mobility is an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union. Since January 2019, they have been working to encourage positive changes in the way people move around cities in order to make them more liveable places. EIT aim to become the largest European initiative transforming urban mobility.  

Over 250+ urban mobility challenges have been identified by cities across Europe. Each year a work programme is developed with a focus on a number of innovation challenge areas to be addressed by EIT Urban Mobility activities (ie. active mobility, sustainable city logistics, creating public realm, etc). Among the topics covered by the challenge Future mobility, urban air mobility has attracted the interest of different society sectors, as it is expected to become a reality in Europe in the coming years with the delivery of goods by drones and the transport of passengers. 

The research and studies on urban air mobility help to increase the knowledge about the topic and confront the pros and cons of this upcoming reality. 

EIT Urban Mobility would like to acknowledge the research efforts by awarding a prize to one of the papers on urban air mobility to be presented during the European Transport Conference (Milan, 7-9 September 2022). The winning research paper will be given the opportunity to publish an article in the EIT Urban Mobility Journal.  

Awards at the ETC 2021

Goudappel Award 2021 for the best paper written for and presented in the Planning for Sustainable Land Use and Transport seminar

Winner Announced!

About the winner:

Sarah McDonagh is currently working as a Senior Transport Planner for Jacobs. She has a keen interest in sustainable transport, with a focus on active travel, and improving infrastructure and mobility for children. She recently completed a MSc in Transport and Mobility which gave her the opportunity to undertake this research around children’s travel needs.

The Jacobs Award For The Paper Demonstrating The Most Innovative Use of Data

Winner Announced!

About the Winners:

Ella Dahan is a Senior Transport Analytics Consultant in Arup’s Transport group. She is a specialist in data driven decision making and modelling, and helps clients gain actionable insights from their data. Ella has over 10 years of consulting experience, specialising within analytics, dashboarding, simulation and operations research. She has worked with clients across a range of industries such as aviation, transport, logistics, emergency services and energy.

Aastha Madaan is a well published data scientist with over a decade of experience in applications of AI, ML and IoT in academia, industry, and the built environment. She is a data science manager at Accenture’s Applied Intelligence group in the UK delivering data science, machine learning solutions and products for clients in transport and asset heavy industries. She supports her clients’ C-suite teams to successfully drive data analytics and digital transformation projects which keeps people, processes, and technology at its heart.  Prior to joining Accenture, Aastha worked as a senior data scientist at Arup leading a team of data scientists and successfully delivered data products and digital transformation solutions across aviation, rail, healthcare, and infrastructure sectors. The ‘Airport Demand Analyser’ data product she led at Arup was nominated as a finalist in ‘product innovation’ category at the British Construction Industry Awards 2020.   Aastha was previously a research fellow at University of Southampton where she led research on a large scale IoT data sharing test bed co-funded by EPSRC, Google Cloud and Cisco CityVerve. She has visited world-renowned universities across several countries delivering talks on data sharing, data trusts and AI/ML.  She is a PhD in Computer Science from University of Aizu, Japan, specialising in database query language design for healthcare data repositories. She did her Masters in Unsupervised algorithms for streaming data and has an honours degree in Computer Science from Delhi University. She is passionate about promoting women in STEM and using data science to design a better world.

The Neil Mansfield Award

Winner Announced!

The Young Researchers' and Practitioners' Forum (YRPF)  are very pleased to announce the winner of the Neil Mansfield Award.

The award is given in the name of Neil Mansfield, a brilliant young researcher in the UK Department of Transport, who died at a young age. The prize is awarded for the best paper written by an author under the age of 35.

About the Winners:

Federico Messa joined Systematica in 2016. He has been an Architect since 2021, and active as a transport consultant on a diverse set of projects, ranging from territorial studies to masterplans and complex buildings mobility strategies. He is also involved in architecture and mobility research studies, mainly related to urban dynamics, mobility data analysis and visualization, project performance analysis and spatial analysis.

Diego Deponte is Partner, Managing Director and Member of the BoD of Systematica Srl, a Transport Planning and Mobility Engineering consultancy established in 1989 with its main office in Milan (Italy) and subsidiary offices in Beirut (Lebanon), Mumbai (India) and New York (USA). With a Master of Science in Civil Engineering (Specialisation in Transport Planning and Infrastructure Design) at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy), he has been working for almost 20 years in the transport planning industry, gaining a considerable experience in all-round transport and mobility planning and design as well as territorial/urban planning at international level, with a focus on the assessment of innovative and state-of-the-art mobility solutions, to include digital solutions for traffic management and mobility operations, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) schemes, driverless solutions, on-demand public transport services, ride-sharing and mobility-sharing schemes, car-pooling systems as well as Open / Big Data analytics to inform and enrich planning and design activities. Over his extensive career, he has been working on a wide range of projects and studies for the public and private sector clients alike, gaining valuable international professional experience and proven track-record in Europe, Middle East, South Asia, Far East, China and Africa.

Awards at the ETC 2020

There were two awards for papers presented at ETC 2020 online:

Award for the paper showing the most innovative use of Data, sponsored by Jacobs

Winning Paper

Harnessing people movement data to shape future activity and people-centric designs: a case study of Salford Quays

Peter O’Hare, Salford City Council; Paul Jackson, Tracsis, UK

About the Winners:

Peter O'Hare - Regeneration Lead, Salford Quays - Salford City Council

Peter is Salford City Council’s Regeneration Lead for Salford Quays. He spent over 10 years as an Urban Designer before re-joining the council to project manage the delivery of key projects in one of the Greater Manchester’s most important areas for growth and regeneration.  Peter has specialised in developing spaces with a focus on people that not only promote active travel but also seek to incorporate Sustainable drainage and green environment.  Salford Quays is an important innovation district and Peter has been seeking to readdress the way the council works in the area, delivering a digital first approach and finding other innovative methods to make the spaces work better for everyone; from visitors to those who maintain the spaces.  Peter has a Masters in Planning and is a Chartered Member.

Paul Jackson Strategic Development Director Tracsis 

Paul has over 30 years’ experience of providing transport data solutions, training and advice throughout the UK, Europe, the Far and Middle East, Africa, Australia and North America. He has helped bring innovative solutions to transport data challenges including the application of vision-based sensors using machine learning techniques for the monitoring of pedestrian, cyclist and vehicle movements; bringing mobile phone network datasets integrated with layered transport intelligence to the transport planning, operations and events markets; the development and roll out of technologies and services for origin-destination and journey time studies of pedestrians and vehicles using Bluetooth and other advanced detection systems for transport, major events and planning projects.

Prior to joining Tracsis in 2007 Paul gained ten years’ experience of using transport data and a variety of modelling suites as a traffic modelling team leader with the Greater Manchester Transportation Unit and subsequently led the Transport Surveys Group for over 12 years. He has an MSc in Transport Planning and Engineering from the Institute for Transport Studies University of Leeds, regularly provides training to professionals in data collection techniques and supports ITS Masters students and young professionals with professional development mentoring.

Runner Up

A novel location data intelligence framework fostering smart cycling inclusion and transport decarbonisation in small- to medium-sized European cities. Evidence-based findings from recent trials conducted in German and Italian cities  

G di Acciaro, G Ciccarelli, NET Engineering S.p.A, BU Transport & Mobility, IT; C Andriolo, Comune di Vicenza, Area servizi al territorio, Servizio Mobilità e Trasporti, IT; K Muthmann, Cyface GmbH, DE

Third Place

Passenger safety: the impact of smoother bus acceleration on passenger experience aboard London buses  

X Karekla, AECOM, UK

Special Mention

A method of processing eye-tracking data to study driver’s visual perception in simulated driving scenarios

Y Shi, Y Xu, A Ferraioli, B Piga, L Mussone, G Caruso, Politecnico di Milano, IT

Route optimisation programming for emergency vehicles aftermath of freight train accidents involving hazardous materials (7002)

S Amin, L Froger, O Haas, Coventry University, UK

The Selection Process

The winner of the “Jacobs award for the paper demonstrating the most innovative use of data” was the paper “Harnessing people movement data to shape future activity and people-centric designs. A case study of Salford Quays”. The team at Jacobs have gone through an extensive selection process to pick out this excellent paper as the winner.

Whilst shortlisting they were firstly looking for papers that were using new and up-to-date datasets, whether it was real time Google Maps data, mobile phone data or CCTV data. They then focused on what techniques were applied to that data, concentrating on advanced statistical and data science methodologies such as, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Finally, they considered what was the outcome of the whole study, how innovative and how beneficial it can be to the Transport industry.

The paper was as the winner because it impressed the judges at each stage of the selection process. The data used in this study was the CCTV footage of Salford Quays public spaces. The information extracted from the data focused on how the active modes (walking and cycling) use the public areas and whether the balance of the space between pedestrians, cyclists, drivers, and other modes was right. These data were analysed using vision-based artificial intelligence systems and movement tracing to understand how different factors such as, time of day, weather, social events and other interventions can affect human behaviour like movement patterns and total number of people. The outcome of this study was the understanding of how public space is used and what are the driving factors in the environment for promoting active travel. This information can then be used in major infrastructure schemes and improvements when considering the planning of an area for gentrification.

In the shortlist, there were some fantastic papers that made the final choice very difficult. Several papers demonstrated innovative use of data; however, it was the final conclusions and possible uses of this study that made Jacobs choose it as the winner. CCTV footage has been used in the Transport industry in the past, however the use of artificial intelligence and automation applied in this study makes it repeatable and consistent for the future whilst removing any unnecessary human error. This study will help process live data straight from CCTV footage and use it as evidence to lead to a much more efficient urban planning through the understanding of how people truly use public spaces

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The Neil Mansfield Award

Winner Announced!

The Young Researchers' and Practitioners' Forum (YRPF)  are very pleased to announce the winner of the Neil Mansfield Award.

The award is given in the name of Neil Mansfield, a brilliant young researcher in the UK Department of Transport, who died at a young age. The prize is awarded for the best paper written by an author under the age of 35.

This year we say huge congratulations to Zishu Liu, of ARUP UK for their paper:

"Using Google Maps to calculate generalised cost and accessibility for London: a new methodology"

Zishu is a Graduate Transport Planner based in Arup’s London office. She has experience working in strategic modelling for highway networks and future forecasting in UK. This experience allows her to support large-scale projects by providing insight to each stage of the strategic modelling process. She also provided overseas support in traffic analyses of developments for Arup East Asia. Before joining Arup, she studied MSc in Transport & Business Management at Imperial College London and finished Bachelors’ degree in Highway & Bridge Engineering in China. Her developing interest is the interaction between transportation and urban environment.

Well done Zishu!

https://lnkd.in/dv9HW64

Past Winners of the Neil Mansfield Award