Prof Wafaa Saleh invited to give talk at the Institut für Verkehrswesen, Vienna

Prof Wafaa Saleh was invited as an external committee member to participate in a habilitation committee at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (Universität für Bodenkultur Wien – BOKU) on 15th October.  This is the qualification to conduct self-contained university teaching and is the key for access to a professorship in many European countries.  Wafaa gave a talk on the subject ‘Can autonomous vehicles help reducing traffic congestion in urban areas?’

In recent years, the dramatic progress of ITS makes auto driving technology feasible. Many studies and researchers investigated issues related to autonomous vehicles. These include social, technology and prediction of the market. Various models have been developed, yet using same principles of the models that were developed for manually driven vehicles. There are still a lot unknown about this technology and its impacts on traffic and the transportation system as a whole. For example, what impacts on traffic flow do the vehicles equipped with such technologies have? Specifically speaking, will congestion be increased or decreased by such vehicles? In order to answer these questions, methods of predicting traffic conditions with simulation models exist. In this presentation, we generate some scenarios to illustrate possible impacts of autonomous vehicles on congestion.