Post-Doctoral Researcher in Travel Behavior and Demand Modeling

80%-100%, Singapore, fixed-term

The Singapore ETH Centre Future Cities Lab Global, in collaboration with the National University of Singapore and the Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering at Hiroshima University, has an opening for a post-doctoral researcher in Travel Behavior and Demand Modeling.

Project background

In recent times, cities have experienced an unprecedented period of flux, whether triggered by disruptive technology, political upheavals, emergent social trends or the ongoing global pandemic. These growing uncertainties have prompted cities to rethink land use and transportation infrastructure provision planned for the future. The ETH and NUS, in collaboration with a team at Hiroshima University, have a new project, Adaptive Mobility, Infrastructure and Land Use, "AMIL", within the Future Cities Lab – Global Research Programme (FCL-G) that aims to integrate mobility, land use and infrastructure into a resilient, adaptive system that responds to changing needs, through a three-pronged approach. First, social network surveys in Zurich and Singapore will monitor and examine the 'drivers of change' by assessing changes in social and economic activity, further informed by the ongoing experiments at Hiroshima University in the joint activity decision-making process. Second, novel transport modelling and simulation techniques will be developed to handle the unique challenges posed by the 'city in flux', with dynamically adaptive land use and demand-responsive transportation systems. Third, exploratory modelling, decision-making under uncertainty methods (e.g., real options) and optimisation methods will be employed to formulate adaptive plans that can respond to short-term and long-term change. The project will bring tools, insights, methods, and procedures that can provide decision support for planning across relevant scales of time and space. Simulation models and software tools will be developed in consultation with an expert panel of practitioners and policymakers, to enable adaptive planning, improve resilience to shocks such as COVID-19, and reduce misalignment of provision and emerging demand in the long term. These learnings will be applied to a study of urban development across intercity, city-wide and local scales in both Alpine and Asian contexts, with Zürich, Singapore and Higashi-Hiroshima as the main hubs under study. The project will be guided by regular stakeholder workshops in both contexts. It will produce a suite of open-source software tools and planning recommendations developed in collaboration with an inter-agency working group for adaptive mobility, land use, and infrastructure.

Job description

You will mainly work on advancing the state-of-the-art of agent-based, activity-based transport modelling and its application in adaptive infrastructure planning. 

There are three challenges in state-of-the-art activity-based models. First, household travel survey (HTS) data has low spatial resolution and is not dynamic enough to account for system-level shocks. Second, since a series of econometric models are used to predict each dimension of the activity schedule (e.g., trip purpose, mode & duration), the dependency across dimensions is missing (e.g., a person can go to the office by car but return by bus). Third, HTS data does not have information on how people jointly plan leisure activities, leading to poor spatial distribution of secondary activities in activity-based models. The low spatial resolution of HTS also causes this issue. To address you will focus on the following tasks: 

• Developing analytical methods and generative AI architectures to jointly generate a synthetic population and forecast its activity patterns at an urban scale by fusing HTS data with continuous and large-scale passively collected mobility data (e.g., cellular signaling data).
• Devising a new approach to collect travel diary data with social network effects, which will be used to generate a “synthetic population with social network.” The resulting behavior models of joint leisure activity planning will be applied to the population in the activity-based model to improve the representation of secondary activities.

You will be working daily with the principal investigator at the National University of Singapore, Assist. Prof. Prateek Bansal will lead the research related to data fusion and social networks. He/she will coordinate with other colleagues in the team at FCL-G who focus on the estimation of meta-models from ensemble runs of agent-based models to facilitate the development of a long-term infrastructure planning framework. Additionally, you are expected to participate in regular exchanges and coordination with Prof. Kay Axhausen and his research team in Zürich, who will be working on similar topics.

Your profile

You have: 

• A doctoral degree in spatial planning, transport planning, civil engineering, systems engineering, or a related field
• A good grasp of probability theory, optimization, deep learning, discrete choice models, activity-based travel demand modelling, and traffic assignment
• Experience in doing methodological work – reflected through publication record
• Proven experience and strong programming skills in Java, Python, and/or R, as well as in the use of GIS tools
• Proficiency in written and spoken English

Your workplace

Your workplace

We offer

ETH Zurich is a family-friendly employer with excellent working conditions. You can look forward to an exciting working environment, cultural diversity and attractive offers and benefits.

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Curious? So are we.

We look forward to receiving your online application with the following documents:

• A letter of interest, including your understanding of the problem and thoughts on a way forward
• A first-author publication that has proposed a novel method and showed its superiority
• A curriculum vitae (with a list of publications and contact information of at least two referees)
• Grade records of all university courses taken as well as diplomas

Please note that we exclusively accept applications submitted through our online application portal. Applications via email or postal services will not be considered.

Screening of applications starts on 10th December 2023. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

Questions regarding the position should be directed to Dr. Prateek Bansal, Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore  email: [email protected] 

Singapore-ETH Centre

The Singapore-ETH Centre provides a multicultural and interdisciplinary environment to researchers working on diverse themes focussed on sustainable and liveable cities, resilient urban systems, and patient-centric healthcare. The centre is home to a community of over 100 doctoral, postdoctoral and professorial researchers working in three main programmes: Future Cities Laboratory, Future Resilient Systems, and Future Health Technologies.