The lecture series on traffic infrastructure optimization sponsored by the Department of road and railway engineering of civil engineering specialty ended perfectly at 11:00 on January 14, 2022 Beijing time. With the support of the innovation and talent introduction base of geotechnical and underground engineering intelligent construction and safety discipline of our university, This lecture series invited Paul Schonfeld, a professor from the Department of civil engineering at the University of Maryland, to report to us, and attracted many teachers and students majoring in road and rail in different universities.

Professor Paul Schonfeld is a well-known scholar in the field of Transportation Engineering in the United States. He is engaged in the research on issues related to road network, traffic management system, public transport system, freight logistics, inland waterway and airport. He once served as the head of transportation engineering at the University of Maryland for 19 years, presided over a number of NSFC projects, and won the ASCE's James Laurie prize transportation engineering career achievement award in 2018. Since 2021, he has served as an overseas expert of the innovation and talent introduction base of geotechnical and underground engineering intelligent construction and safety discipline of Southwest Jiaotong University.

Lecture introduction:

Part I-Alignment Design for Road, Rail and Rail Transit Alignments:

In recent years, artificial intelligence heuristic algorithm has been applied to automatic positioning and line design of expressway, railway and urban rail transit systems, which can greatly reduce the required manual labor and time. Heuristic algorithm can learn manual experience, consider additional factors, and then provide a better design scheme. Obtain data from geographic information system (GIS), and evaluate and optimize the routes of highway, railway and rail transit systems (intersections, overpasses, mountainous terrain, bridges, tunnels, existing routes, stations and road network structures along rail transit) in combination with quantifiable objectives and realistic constraints.

Part II-Selection and Scheduling of Interrelated Infrastructure Improvements:

The selection and scheduling of relevant improvement schemes have many applications in engineering, management, operations research and other important fields. However, under the influence of multiple uncertainties, scheduling decisions, real-scale problems and other factors, even the improvement scheme evaluation algorithm for specific applications has defects. The report will introduce relevant general methods, take uncertainty and economic factors into account, and evaluate, select, rank and dispatch relevant infrastructure improvement schemes during the development of transportation system. The evaluation algorithm of each system improvement scheme is combined with the improved general algorithm of selection and scheduling, which is applied to the improvement of road network, urban rail transit, freight railway network, inland waterway and airport infrastructure.

After the lecture, experts, scholars and postgraduates from our university ,domestic fraternal universities and scientific research institutes had an in-depth exchange and discussion with Professor Paul Schonfeld on the relevant issues mentioned in the lecture. Paul Schonfeld answered and discussed the relevant issues in detail, Finally, on behalf of "111" talent introduction base and "Yanghua" forum, Professor He Qing of road and railway engineering thanked Professor Paul Schonfeld for being invited to carry out two such vivid academic reports.

The purpose of this lecture series is to broaden the academic vision of teachers and students, let teachers and students understand the future optimization trend of transportation infrastructure, show the good demeanor of actively studying in the innovation and development of the road and rail engineering discipline of our university, promote the process of international running of the school of civil engineering of our university, and provide new direction and new support for the academic innovation of teachers and students of our university.