PhD Thesis "Digital Twins for Transportation"

As Austria's largest research and technology organisation for applied research, we are dedicated to make substantial contributions to solving the major challenges of our time, climate change and digitisation. To achieve our goals, we rely on our specific research, development and technology competencies, which are the basis of our commitment to excellence in all areas. With our open culture of innovation and our motivated, international teams, we are working to position AIT as Austria's leading research institution at the highest international level and to make a positive contribution to the economy and society.
 
Our Competence Unit “Digital Resilient Cities”, part of our Center for Energy located in Vienna invites applications for a PhD Thesis position. The Competence Unit "Digital Resilient Cities" supports cities and their stakeholders in the cross-sectoral transformation process, combining expertise in climate, energy, mobility, and urban planning. With the aim of creating climate-neutral, competitive, and sustainable living spaces, we develop and integrate state-of-the-art evidence-based analysis and simulation tools for sustainable transportation, systemic urban transformation, as well as for the concrete planning and management of neighborhood and building solutions.
 As part of our mission to develop smart solutions to tackle the climate change, we have launched a PhD programme with TU Munich – Hereby we offer a PhD Thesis focusing on the topic of Digital Twins for Transportation. Our main goal is to advance transportation planning by merging it with perspectives from urban planning. Future challenges of both fields should be considered together thus enhancing quality of the planning results and enabling a higher quality of urban transformation processes.

PhD Thesis "Digital Twins for Transportation"

CENTER FOR ENERGY

The PhD candidate may work on one of the followings specific PhD topics:

• Meta Study on Defining Best Practices: Conduct a comprehensive meta-study to delineate best practices for designing models relevant to urban and traffic planning. This involves synthesising existing literature and identifying optimal methodologies for model development.
• Integration of models from multiple disciplines: Using the digital twin of a city as a standard model, traffic models and other transport related data sets may be linked to urban models. This integration aims to enhance the accuracy and applicability of the models in real-world scenarios.
• Enable informed and fact-based participation: Explore stakeholder decision-making processes which include results from the evaluation of scenarios. Studies may consider the timely provision of indicators, the representation and relevance of indicators.
• Interrelations between urban and transport planning: Analyse effects of transportation trends (e.g., parking restrictions, autonomous vehicles) on urban design and planning.
• Test Junction Experimentation: Standardise experimental studies and test them on a test junction. Create a digital model of the controlled test site and calibrate behaviour based on experimental data in the digital model.
• Connection to City Intelligence Lab: Collaborate with our City Intelligence Lab to leverage resources, expertise, and infrastructure for advancing research in digital twins for transportation.

The PhD position will employ various methods to achieve its objectives, including:

• Simulation and calibration: Utilise diverse datasets for the calibration of multiple models, such as pedestrian simulation or SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility).
• Model Integration: Integrate calibrated models to create a comprehensive digital twin framework for transportation planning.
• Participation studies: Employ an iterative approach for integrated transport and urban planning, incorporating feedback from stakeholders and experimental results to refine and improve acceptance of planning results.

Your qualifications as an Ingenious Partner:

• Master's studies in the field of Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Transportation Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Mobility & Transport Planning, Mathematics, or related fields
• Experience with agent-based simulation and transport planning tools
• Experience in GIS software, CityGML, AutoCAD or similar software are beneficial
• Experience with programming languages (e.g. Python, R, …), Data Science methods for large data sets and machine learning applications are an asset
• Willingness to publish in scientific journals and present research results at international conferences
• High level of commitment and team spirit
• Very good English language and presentation skills are essential, German language skills are an asset

 Details:

• Duration of the PhD project: 4 years
• Start date: as soon as possible
• Location: the primary location is Vienna with possibility to work partly remotely
• In order to enroll for the PhD program at TU Munich you must first undergo an admission process.
• You work on your research project directly with our team at AIT in Vienna. Your PhD studies, incl. exams will take place remotely / on site in coordination with your supervisor at TU Munich.
• As part of the TUM PhD programme, it is mandatory to take part in the TUM Graduate School and be physically present at the Chair for Traffic Systems and Control in Munich for some weeks of the year
• You will also have the opportunity for traveling to Munich to exchange with experts from the Chair of Traffic Engineering and Control
• You will be supervised (remotely) by Prof. Dr. Klaus Bogenberger from TU Munich and by Dr. Stefan Seer at AIT as well as by scientists and engineers from our Digital Resilient Cities team

What to expect:
EUR 2.684,10 gross per month (14 times / year), for 30 h / week. In addition to numerous events, seminars, networking opportunities and additional company benefits, you will be part of our AIT PhD community with around 150 international students. As a research institution, we are familiar with the supervision and execution of PhD theses, and we are looking forward to supporting you accordingly!
 
At AIT diversity and inclusion are of great importance. This is why we strive to inspire women to join our teams in the field of technology. We welcome applications from women, who will be given preference in case of equal qualifications after taking into account all relevant facts and circumstances of all applications.
 
Please submit your documents including your CV, cover letter and your certificates (Transcript of records) online.
 
For further information please contact:
Dr. Stefan Seer, stefan.seer(at)ait.ac.at

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