A Global Collaboration to Chart the Future of Urban Mobility

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Research Foundation of Singapore today announced the launch of a project to develop new models and tools for the planning, design, and operation of future urban transportation.

Aimed at making urban transportation systems more environmentally sustainable - first in Singapore, and ultimately on a global scale - these new models will be developed and deployed by nearly 60 researchers from four academic institutions.

The five-year project will be led by Amedeo Odoni, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and engage some 30 other faculty and researchers from the School of Engineering, the Sloan School of Management, and the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT.

"Collaboration on this scale is remarkable-and absolutely necessary if we are going to address an issue as complex as urban transportation and mobility," said Subra Suresh, Dean of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at MIT.

"When addressing issues today, especially those affecting the climate, it is not sufficient to take complex problems apart and merely investigate incremental improvements to their components," he says.

"This project will leave the challenges of transportation intact and try to address them all simultaneously.