Review
Annual Users Group Meeting and Award Ceremony
This year's annual international PTV Vision Users Group Meeting was held in Vienna and attracted nearly 70 visitors from over 21 countries. The 2nd Scientific Award ceremony, which honoured outstanding research projects involving the use of the PTV Vision software modules VISSIM and VISUM, was the highlight and the final event of the annual meeting.
- Dr. Klaus Nökel outlines the latest developments in VISUM
The program covered applications ranging from private and public to intermodal transportation. The speakers presented examples of applications in Japan, Hungary, China, Russia, Denmark and Great Britain, clearly demonstrating that the software is used worldwide for the development of traffic solutions.
The workshops provided valuable tips and tricks on how to use PTV Vision. From 3D designs in VISSIM and new assignment planning features in VISUM to the visualisation of park&ride facilities in a demand model - UGM 2009 offered attendees plenty of useful information.
- Vienna Hofburg (Imperial Palace)
- Evening event in Vienna
Attendees also had the opportunity to discover Vienna by joining several guided tours after the sessions. In the evening, they met at a nice restaurant to relax and review the day, whilst enjoying a glass of famous Austrian wine and excellent food.
2nd PTV Scientific Award
- Prof.Dr. Guido Gentile wins first prize.
PTV AG invited scientists from all over the world to submit their innovative contributions for the second PTV Vision Scientific Award. From the 14 entries involving the use of the PTV Vision modules VISUM or VISSIM for innovative research projects, the three best were rewarded.
This years' winner of the EUR 2,500 prize is Professor Guide Gentile from the University of Rome. He developed the new algorithm LUCE (Linear User Cost Equilibrium) which revolutionised the earlier traffic assignment procedures by improving the runtime, convergence and path proportionality. This means that transportation planners can now perform the most-used modelling calculations in practice more quickly and efficiently.
The second place was given to Denis Zenkov from the Transport and Telecommunication Institute in Riga with the development of a procedure for automatically calibrating simulation parameters. With his work on the variability of simulation results, Zeeshan Raza Abdy, postgraduate at the University of Waterloo in Canada, was able to gain third place. Guohoi Zhang from the University of Texas at Austin also won third prize. He analysed the impact of dynamic tolling for special lanes using an add-on module for VISSIM which he also developed for this research project.
Dr.-Ing. Peter Vortisch, coordinator of the prize at PTV, said of the entries: "It was particularly important for us that we reward entries that not only contain a purely scientific quality, but also display a real effect in practice."
