Maria Konstantinidou defended her Phd thesis on the optimization of network operation after a catastrofic event, December 2020

Maria Konstantinidou has successfully defended her PhD dissertation titled: “Model development for the optimization of network operation in the aftermath of a catastrophic event”, on Wednesday December 2nd 2020 at 9.30, via a teleconference: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/team/19%3a1607707187e640cd9ba0ef34f20a36a7%40thread.tacv2/conversations?groupId=2b70824c-b33e-481e-8ba4-b0bf8a1910f5&tenantId=075e0cb3-752a-4320-b3676d08b7918c40

This PhD thesis was carried out at the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens under the supervision of Professor Emeritus A. Stathopoulos.

The thesis endeavors to advance the state-of-the-art in disaster management by providing a framework that supports and promotes the enhancement of network functionality in an integrated manner. The thesis distances itself from the consideration of specific network operations and examines network functioning from a wider perspective, that of generalized network management. In order to do so, the framework explicitly considers the operational state of the network and users’ behavioral patterns and attempts a system re-organization on the basis of defined objectives; this is achieved through the use of appropriate strategies, the development of a multi-aspect performance measure, the formulation of suitable hypotheses regarding route construction and route choice and the selection of an appropriate analysis concept. The dissertation ultimately provides a sound conceptual and mathematical framework for efficiently handling the various needs arising in the period following a catastrophe. The framework can be used as a planning tool by transportation professionals and stakeholders and adds a higher degree of realism in the decision-making process by explicitly accounting for some of the stochasticities that are either way present in transportation management, but possibly exacerbated in a post-disaster setting.

Invitation 

Summary