Analysis of Social Equity in Transportation in Washington DC Region Considering Sea Level Rise Using Advanced Travel Demand Models
| dc.contributor.author | Paudel, Akshaya | en |
| dc.contributor.department | Civil and Environmental Engineering | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-01-23T20:07:33Z | en |
| dc.date.available | 2024-01-23T20:07:33Z | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-09-27 | en |
| dc.description.abstract | The world is increasingly becoming urban. In fact, 80 percent of the US population is already living in cities. With the influx of a huge population in urban areas, the urban infrastructures are bound to be stressed. Furthermore, people from every walk of life live in urban areas in search of better economic opportunities. These diverse people have diverse needs. To make matters worse, governments have a limited budget. And, they are faced with the challenge of providing infrastructure and public services fair to everyone. This thesis attempts to respond to these challenges through two manuscripts. The first manuscript proposes a decision-support tool that responds to these challenges along with the flooding vulnerability due to sea-level-rise. As flooding events are getting more frequent and intense, coastal road network is vulnerable and can significantly affect daily mobility. Therefore, the paper proposes an optimization framework that minimizes the cost of mitigation measures for flooding while also considering social equity. As a result, the results of this optimization function is not only financially optimum but also equitable to all. The second manuscript proposes a novel framework for analyzing equity in terms of access to opportunity, rather than equity of outcomes. We showcase the use of a large-scale, high-fidelity agent-based, activity-based travel demand model to produce travel times to employment centers. This travel time is used as a proxy to access to opportunities. The results are visualized in a GIS heatmap. The model is applied to the Metropolitan Washington DC area. This manuscript contributes to the literature by analyzing the equity of opportunities without considering an individual’s socioeconomic characteristics. | en |
| dc.description.abstractgeneral | The world is increasingly becoming urban. In fact, 80 percent of the US population is already living in cities. With the influx of a huge population in urban areas, the urban infrastructures are bound to be stressed. Furthermore, people from every walk of life live in urban areas in search of better economic opportunities. These diverse people have diverse needs. To make matters worse, governments have a limited budget. And, they are faced with the challenge of providing infrastructure and public services fair to everyone. This thesis attempts to respond to these challenges through two manuscripts. As flooding events are getting more frequent and of more intensity, coastal road network is vulnerable and can significantly affect day-to-day movements. Decision makers face the challenge of mitigating the flood risk under budget constraints and they need to make their decision fair to everyone. The first manuscript proposes a decision-support tool that not only optimizes the use of a limited budget but also ensures the decision is fair to everyone. The idea of what is fair to everyone is a contentious issue. Recently some people have argued against using socioeconomic characteristics of people in making investment decisions. Therefore, the second manuscript proposes a novel framework that analyzes access to employment centers using a higher fidelity advanced travel demand model without the explicit use of socioeconomic characteristics of individuals. | en |
| dc.description.degree | Master of Science | en |
| dc.format.medium | ETD | en |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en |
| dc.identifier.other | vt_gsexam:38655 | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10919/117626 | en |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | en |
| dc.publisher | Virginia Tech | en |
| dc.rights | In Copyright | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ | en |
| dc.subject | Social equity in transportation | en |
| dc.subject | Agent-based mode | en |
| dc.subject | Activity-based model | en |
| dc.subject | Equity of opportunity | en |
| dc.subject | flooding vulnerability | en |
| dc.subject | POLARIS | en |
| dc.title | Analysis of Social Equity in Transportation in Washington DC Region Considering Sea Level Rise Using Advanced Travel Demand Models | en |
| dc.type | Thesis | en |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Civil Engineering | en |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University | en |
| thesis.degree.level | masters | en |
| thesis.degree.name | Master of Science | en |