The National Transportation System (NTS) is undoubtedly a complex system-of-systems---a
collection of diverse 'things' that evolve over time, organized at multiple levels, to
achieve a range of possibly conflicting objectives, and never quite behaving as planned.
The purpose of this research is to develop a virtual transportation architecture for the
ultimate goal of formulating an integrated decision-making framework. The foundational
endeavor begins with creating an abstraction of the NTS with the belief that a holistic
frame of reference is required to properly study such a multi-disciplinary, trans-domain
system. The culmination of the effort produces the Transportation Architecture Field
(TAF) as a mental model of the NTS, in which the relationships between four basic entity
groups are identified and articulated. This entity-centric abstraction framework
underpins the construction of a virtual NTS couched in the form of an agent-based model.
The transportation consumers and the service providers are identified as adaptive agents
that apply a set of preprogrammed behavioral rules to achieve their respective goals. The
transportation infrastructure and multitude of exogenous entities (disruptors and
drivers) in the whole system can also be represented without resorting to an extremely
complicated structure. The outcome is a flexible, scalable, computational model that
allows for examination of numerous scenarios which involve the cascade of interrelated
effects of aviation technology, infrastructure, and socioeconomic changes throughout the
entire system.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:GATECH/oai:smartech.gatech.edu:1853/6918 |
| Date | 19 April 2005 |
| Creators | Lewe, Jung-Ho |
| Publisher | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | Georgia Tech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 5107180 bytes, application/pdf |
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