hEART 2023

Dr Maria Lezzi

Maria Lezzi studied geography and wrote her dissertation at the University of Zurich. Until 2001, she acted as deputy managing director of Regio Basiliensis, then head of the Planning Department in the Building and Planning Office of the Canton of Basel-Stadt for eight years. From 2004-2009, she was a member of the extra-parliamentary commission "Council for Spatial Planning". Since 2009 she is director of the Federal Office for Spatial Development ARE.

Abstract

Switzerland has an excellent transport system. Both rail and road are well developed and coordinated with spatial development. Population and economy continue to grow. This means that traffic is also increasing and the need for space for living and working is growing. Further challenges arise from the energy and climate crisis. How can Switzerland ensure that its transport system will continue to be of high quality, use little land and protect the environment in the future?

Dr Mónica Menéndez

Monica Menendez is the Associate Dean of Engineering for Graduate Affairs and a Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). She is also the Director and Lead PI of the CITIES Research Center; and the recipient of the NYUAD Distinguished Research Award for 2021. Before joining NYUAD in 2018, Prof. Menendez was the Director of the research group Traffic Engineering at ETH Zurich. She holds a Ph.D. (2006) and a M.Sc. (2003) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley, and a dual degree in Civil Engineering and Architectural Engineering (2002) from the University of Miami.

Her research interests include multimodal transportation systems paying special attention to new technologies and information sources. Prof. Menendez is a member of multiple editorial boards for top journals in Transportation, and a number of international organizations, including the International Advisory Committee of the International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory (ISTTT), and the Mohammed bin Rashid Academy of Scientists (MBRAS). She is the author of around 100 peer-reviewed journal publications and over 200 conference contributions, book chapters, editorials, and technical reports. In the last five years, five of the papers that she has co-authored, have received best-paper awards.

Abstract

In this presentation, we will discuss how to bring together concepts from statistical physics and transportation engineering into a single science of traffic networks, with the goal of improving the performance of urban traffic, ultimately making our cities more sustainable. We will show that traffic and the ensuing congestion patterns for any given city are reproducible across days. Hence, it is enough to monitor the traffic performance of only a few roads to classify daily patterns and the resulting congestion patterns, allowing cities to reduce monitoring costs. In fact, road and bus network topology can explain around 90% of the empirically observed variation in network capacity for over 40 cities around the world. Moreover, it is possible to relate the road level dynamics to the network level dynamics by observing the number and size of traffic congestion pockets. This allows us to use concepts from physics (such as percolation) to describe the propagation of congestion, so that we can model it using sparse network-level data. It also gives us insights into the ability of different networks to cope with congestion, and the moment at which such congestion becomes so widespread that the whole network collapses.

Dr Philipp Furler

Dr Philipp Furler is the CEO and co-founder of Synhelion. Synhelion is a clean energy company in Switzerland that produces solar fuels to decarbonize transportation. The technology developed by Synhelion uses high-temperature solar heat for the production of liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Their solar jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline can directly replace fossil fuels and are fully compatible with existing global fuel infrastructure. Philipp Furler holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich since 2014. In 2018, he completed his Executive MBA at the University of Strathclyde. Philipp has more than ten years of experience in high-temperature solar chemistry and reactor engineering. Prior to joining Synhelion, Philipp co-founded the ETH spin-off company Sunredox, which was merged with Synhelion in 2018.

Abstract

Synhelion uses solar heat to produce sustainable transportation fuels. The fuels produced by Synhelion – such as solar jet fuel, gasoline, or diesel – can directly replace fossil fuels as they are fully compatible with existing global infrastructure. With its solar fuel technology, Synhelion offers a sustainable and economically viable alternative to fossil fuels and unlocks a clean future of transportation. In his presentation, Dr Philipp Furler gives a first-hand account of the current state of the technology development and explains how solar fuels can make an important contribution to reducing CO2 emissions in the transportation sector.