ESD.00 | Spring 2011 | Undergraduate

Introduction to Engineering Systems

Projects

Over the course of the semester, students work on projects to address large, complex and seemingly intractable real-world problems.

Topics

The three projects topics are:

  • An Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail and Aviation: The Northeast Corridor
  • The Stroke Care Chain
  • The Internet: Governance and the “Digital Divide”

A complete set of materials are available for the project An Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail and Aviation: The Northeast Corridor:

Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Overview

Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Calendar

Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Readings

Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Recitations

Selected materials are available for the other two projects:

The Stroke Care Chain

Overview (PDF) (Courtesy of Dr. Stan Finkelstein, Amparo Canaveras, Kenneth Gotleib, and Abby Horn. Used with permission.)

Calendar and Reading List (PDF) (Courtesy of Dr. Stan Finkelstein, Amparo Canaveras, Kenneth Gotleib, and Abby Horn. Used with permission.)

The Internet: Governance and the “Digital Divide”

Overview (PDF) (Courtesy of Jesse H. Sowell. Used with permission.)

Deliverables

Group Presentation

Each group will have 25 minutes plus 5-10 minutes of questions and discussion for their final presentation. The goal of this presentation is to summarize the goals, analysis, key insights and any recommendations from your semester project.

Written Report

Each group should submit one (1) written report per team. Your final report should be essentially complete by Lecture 12; however, you are encouraged to incorporate any feedback you found useful from the instructors or the other students on your Lecture 12 presentation.

The written report should include an introduction to your project, the motivation behind your project (why does this project matter? is it representative of a “Critical Contemporary Issue” (CCI)? describe your project in terms of a broad systems view), an overview of the analysis that you conducted, a brief description of the methods and tools that you used, the results of your analysis, and your conclusions/ recommendations.

The final report should be roughly 10 to 15 pages (at 12 point font, double-spaced), not including figures and tables. Figures and tables that are essential to describing your results may be placed within the main body of your paper. Additional tables, charts or figures that you wish to include can be provided in the Appendices of the report (e.g. after the first ˜10-15 pages). All facts and data must have reference sources, which should be listed at the end of the paper.

REC # TOPICS KEY DATES
R1 Project motivation and background

  • Growing environmental impacts of transportation, and shifts to faster modes
  • Congestion of the air transportation system
  • High-speed rail development in Europe and China
  • High-speed rail in the United States

  
R2 The case of California and the Northeast Corridor

  • Overview of the proposed California high-speed rail development and current air traffic
  • Overview of the Northeast Corridor: Rail and air transportation
  • Current controversies
  • Discussion on nonlinear behavior of these systems

  
R3 Full class recitation: Tutorial on Vensim  
R4 Demand forecasting and uncertainties

  • Introduction to demand forecasting
  • Current challenges and limitations
  • In-class exercises related to demand forecasting and uncertainty

  
R5 Full class recitation: Introduction to random variables, probability and statistics  
R6 Evaluating the environmental impacts of high-speed transportation

  • Introduction to high-speed rail and air transportation emissions impacts.
  • Discussion of the California case
  • Lifecycle emissions resources (e.g. databases for looking up emissions factors)
  • In-class exercises: example lifecycle emission calculations (for personal vehicles?)

 Preliminary project assignment 1 due
R7 Full class recitation: Midterm project presentations  
R8 Network models of high-speed transportation

  • Overview of network models of rail and air transportation systems
  • Cooperation and competition between high-speed rail and aviation
  • Discussion on Northeast Corridor network

 Preliminary project assignment 2 due
R9 Project feedback and discussion

  • Feedback on preliminary project assignment 1
  • Project discussion.
  • Guest lecture from Cambridge Systematics

  
R10 Project feedback and discussion

  • Feedback on preliminary project assignment 2
  • Discussion on stakeholders

 Preliminary project assignment 3 due
R11 Project lab hours

  • Open lab time for students to work on projects

  
R12 Project lab hours

  • Open lab time for students to work on projects

 Project paper draft

Title

Examining Tradeoffs between High Speed Rail and Air Transportation: An Environmental Analysis of the Northeast Corridor

Instructors

Professor Joseph Sussman

Regina Clewlow (Teaching Assistant)

Introduction

The transportation sector is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for roughly one-third of CO2 emissions globally, and nearly 50 percent of the increase from 1990 emission levels in the United States. Although aviation is currently responsible for only three percent of greenhouse-gas emissions and five percent of global warming, it is among the fastest growing modes within the transportation sector. In fast, most transportation experts predict that over the next 50 years, general transportation volume will increase and shift towards faster modes - primarily aviation (Schafer, 2000). Under business-as-usual scenarios, CO2 emissions from global aviation are expected to increase by 300 percent over the next 40 years (IEA, 2008b).

In many parts of the world, including Europe, Japan, and Korea, high-speed rail has served as an effective substitute for air transportation, and is often promoted as a more environmentally friendly alternative. One study estimates that the CO2 emissions for high speed rail range from 4.011 to 27.515 per kilometer, while CO2 emissions for air transportation are higher at 99.8 to 153.9 per kilometer (Janic, 2003). However, more recent studies indicate that the environmental savings of high-speed rail depend significantly on the ridership levels, partly due to the environmental impacts associated with building rail infrastructure (Chester and Horvath, 2009).

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has designated ten high-speed rail corridors for development in the United States, and many additional corridor extensions. In 2010, the DOT awarded $8 billion of funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to states to support high-speed rail infrastructure, including the proposed California corridor and improvements to the Northeast Corridor (NEC).

Given the significant growth anticipated in demand for non-road transportation (i.e. air transportation and high-speed rail), we would like to explore future projections of intercity passenger demand and their resulting environmental impacts.

Overview

This project team will perform an analysis of high-speed rail and air transportation in the Northeast Corridor. The team will examine future projections of demand for high-speed rail and air transportation, analyze the associated CO2 emissions of this demand, and estimate emissions associated with air and rail infrastructure in the Northeast. The NEC is the only existing high-speed rail corridor in the U.S., where Amtrak’s Acela Express provides service between Boston and Washington, DC (via New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore). Although the Acela Express averages only 68 mph for the Boston to DC journey, it is capable of reaching speeds of 150 mph and provides Boston-NYC service in 3hr31min and NYC-DC service in 2hr45min (NEC, 2010). The NEC Infrastructure Master Plan outlines proposed improvements for this densely populated corridor of the United States.

Expanding on previous analyses of demand and environmental impacts of air and rail transportation in this region, the project team will conduct an uncertainty analysis of rail and air demand, as well as a more complete environmental analysis of the CO2 emissions for these two modes. The end result will be a more robust understanding of future transportation scenarios in the U.S. Northeast.

Methodology

Through this project, students will:

  1. Identify uncertainties associated with the demand of high-speed rail and air transportation in the Northeast corridor. Uncertainty analysis will include identifying the key sources of uncertainty in the system, and quantifying their potential range of values. Given these uncertainties, students will develop potential scenarios for future demand and HSR and air transportation in the Northeast Corridor.
  2. Using lifecycle emissions analysis (LCA) methods, the team will estimate the CO2 emissions associated with different demand scenarios identified in Part 1, as well as the emissions of the required infrastructure improvements.
  3. Identify sources of feedback, delay, and non-linear behavior associated with high-speed rail and air transportation demand and environmental impacts. Students will develop a schematic of a potential system dynamic model for this system.
  4. Develop alternative network structures for high-speed rail and air transportation in the Northeast Corridor. There are numerous high-speed rail network designs that could be proposed for the Northeast Corridor - all with different levels of feasibility, different demand scenarios, and implementation challenges. The team will design an integrated transportation network structure for high-speed rail and air transportation in the Northeast.

REC # TOPICS READINGS
R1 Project motivation and background

“Vision for High-Speed Rail in America.” U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration, April 2009. (PDF - 2.0MB)

Suggested

Tomer, Adie, and Robert Puentes. “Expect Delays: An Analysis of Air Travel Trends in the United States.” Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institute, October 2009. (PDF - 3.7MB)

Schafer, Andreas, and David G. Victor. “The Future Mobility of the World Population.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 34, no. 3 (2000): 171-205.
R2 The case of California and the Northeast Corridor

“Project Vision and Scope.” California High-Speed Rail Authority.

“Northeast Corridor Main Line.” U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration.
R3 Full class recitation: Tutorial on Vensim  
R4 Demand forecasting and uncertainties

Guy, Ann Brody. “California High-Speed Rail Ridership Forecast Not Reliable, Study Finds.” UC Berkeley News Center, July 1, 2010.

Brownstone, David, Mark Hansen, and Samer Madanat. “Review of “Bay Area/California High-Speed Rail Ridership and Revenue Forecasting Study.”” UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies, June 2010.
R5 Full class recitation: Introduction to random variables, probability and statistics  
R6 Evaluating the environmental impacts of high-speed transportation Chester, Mikhail, and Arpad Horvath. “Life-cycle Assessment of High-Speed Rail: the Case of California.” Environmental Research Letters 5, no. 1 (2010).
R7 Full class recitation: Midterm project presentations  
R8 Network models of high-speed transportation  
R9 Project feedback and discussion  
R10 Project feedback and discussion (cont.)  
R11 Project lab hours  
R12 Project lab hours (cont.)  

REC # TOPICS RECITATION NOTES
R1 Project motivation and background  
R2 The case of California and the Northeast Corridor (PDF)
R3 Full class recitation: Tutorial on Vensim  
R4 Demand forecasting and uncertainties (PDF)
R5 Full class recitation: Introduction to random variables, probability and statistics  
R6 Evaluating the environmental impacts of high-speed transportation (PDF)
R7 Lifecycle assessment of aviation and high-speed rail (PDF)
R8 Full class recitation (no individual recitations)  
R9 Input-output lifecycle assessment and stakeholders (PDF)
R10 Project feedback and discussion (cont.)  
R11 Lifecycle assessment (PDF)
R12 Uncertainty analysis and networks (PDF)

Course Info

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Spring 2011
Level
Undergraduate
Topics
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Problem Sets with Solutions
Lecture Notes
Projects with Examples
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