On November 29, 2020, the launch ceremony of the Virtual Lab for Computable Digital Transport (VLCDT), jointly organized by the School of Public Affairs of Zhejiang University and the Zhejiang University -University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institution (ZJUI), was successfully held at the School of Public Affairs. Experts and scholars from Zhejiang Big Data Development Center, Zhejiang Provincial Transport Department, Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department, Zhejiang Provincial Transportation Investment Group, Geely Automobile Research Institute, Fudan Planning and Architectural Design Institute, and other guests from government and research institutions participated in the event.
At the launching ceremony, ZJUI Vice Dean Professor Ma Hao gave an opening remarks, expounding that ZJUI pays great attention to intelligent transportation technology innovation and has been providing strong support for multidisciplinary cutting-edge research for a long time, and the establishment of the VLCDT will lead to a number of high-level innovations. Professor Zhang Weiwen, Vice Dean of School of Public Affairs of Zhejiang University, expressed the support of the School to the innovative development of interdisciplinary integration, and put forward ardent hope for the future development of the VLCDT.
ZJUI Assistant Professor Simon J. Hu delivered a keynote speech titled "Urban Digital Traffic Management and Optimization", introducing the research results of the Future Transportation Lab in the fields of traffic mode analysis, network-connected automated driving collaborative optimization and UAV-based traffic monitoring.
Research Professor WU Chao gave a keynote presentation titled "Deep Learning Based Urban Traffic Prediction", highlighting the existing achievements of the Computational Social Sciences Research Center in the field of intelligent transportation, including ride-hailing traffic forecasting and cell phone sensor-based road condition detection.
Mr.JIN Jiahe, Director of Zhejiang Big Data Development Center, extended warm congratulations on the establishment of the VLCDT and encouraged the VLCDT to aim at the international state-of-the-art technology and grasp the major needs of the development of intelligent transportation in his concluding remarks. He stressed the need to accelerate the development of standards for open data sharing, improve data security protection capabilities, and promote the integration of the digital economy and the real economy in the process of intelligent transportation construction.
After the launch ceremony, all the guests visited the lab together. The VLCDT students and faculty introduced the lab's achievements in the field of computable digital transportation in detail to the guests, and discussed the prediction and visualization analysis of ride-hailing traffic, urban road condition detection based on cell phone sensors, urban logistics vehicle path optimization based on distribution robots, trajectory optimization of driverless cars in a networked environment, optimization of urban logistics impact on the urban environment, and Hangzhou's smart city based TOD model research etc.
The VLCDT was founded by the Computational Social Sciences Research Center of Zhejiang University and the Future Transportation Lab of Zhejiang University. The establishment of the VLCDT will further promote the two sides to jointly carry out intelligent transportation research, dig deep into the digital value of the transportation field, promote the upgrade of the transportation industry intelligence, and provide more scientific data support for government transportation planning, public transportation optimization, transportation precision management and other applications.
