SCC: Leveraging Autonomous Shared Vehicles for Greater Community Health, Equity, Livability, and Prosperity (HELP)

这笔智能互联社区(SCC)赠款支持对许多城市和社区面临的一个关键挑战的基础研究：如何利用新兴的自动驾驶汽车(AVs)来重新思考和重新设计未来的交通服务，并使智能和互联社区人人受益。这项研究设想了一个雄心勃勃的“智能云通勤系统”(SCCS)，该系统基于巨大的共享AVs池。设想的SCCS有可能带来深远的社会变革。它将为所有人，特别是处于社会经济不利地位的人提供廉价的流动服务，帮助建立更牢固的家庭和社区联系，并通过缓解或消除流动限制，提高经济生产率和公平。这项研究将与五个社区参与试点项目一起进行，直接为美国的繁荣和福祉做出贡献。这项研究涉及多个学科，包括交通、计算机科学、数据科学、运筹学、城市设计和公共政策。多学科方法将有助于扩大未被充分代表的群体在研究中的参与，并丰富学生在科学、工程、城市设计和公共政策方面的教育经验。该项目的目标有两个：(1)研究设想的SCCS的可行性、经济可行性、建筑和运作设计；(2)分析实现设想的SCCS以服务于不同社会经济背景的社区所面临的社会经济挑战。为了支持这些目标，该项目将利用关于旅行需求、用户偏好和活动旅行限制的新的和新兴的数据来量化系统效率收益，这些收益可以通过自动驾驶的分时和智能控制以及用户的拼车和智能出行计划来实现。研究还将开发优化模型和算法，在决定如何在地理和时间上最好地部署自动驾驶系统时，考虑到基本的权衡，包括成本、服务质量和拥堵，从而确定最佳的无人机机队架构和最佳运营策略。研究还将利用微观经济学/博弈论对用户和服务提供商的激励进行分析，调查车辆拥有量和市场结构的可能情景，并研究每种情景对交通措施(包括车辆拥有量和交通量)以及社会措施(包括社区健康、公平、宜居性和繁荣)的影响。这项研究将产生关于设想的共享自动驾驶系统的社会经济机会和影响的基本知识，并为适应未来智能城市的自动驾驶系统的设计、部署和运营制定指导方针。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Smart & Connected Communities (SCC) grant supports fundamental research on a critical challenge facing many cities and communities: how to leverage the emerging autonomous vehicles (AVs) to re-think and re-design future transportation services and enable smart and connected communities where everyone benefits. The research envisages an ambitious "smart cloud commuting system" (SCCS) based on giant pools of shared AVs. The envisaged SCCS has the potential to bring about far-reaching societal changes. It will provide inexpensive mobility services to all people especially people with socio-economic disadvantages, help build stronger family and community ties, and boost economic productivity and equity by mitigating or removing mobility constraints. The research will be carried out in conjunction with five community engagement pilot projects, directly contributing to US prosperity and well-being. The research involves multiple disciplines, including transportation, computer science, data science, operations research, urban design, and public policy. The multi-disciplinary approach will help broaden participation of underrepresented groups in research, and enrich students' educational experience across science, engineering, urban design, and public policy. The goal of the project is two-fold: (1) to study the feasibility, economic viability, architectural and operational designs of the envisaged SCCS; and (2) to analyze the socioeconomic challenges in realizing the envisaged SCCS to serve communities with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. In support of these goals, the project will leverage new and emerging data on travel demand, user preferences, and activity-travel constraints to quantify system efficiency gains that can be attained from time-sharing and intelligent control of AVs as well as from ride-sharing and smart trip scheduling of users. The research will also develop optimization models and algorithms that account for essential tradeoffs, including cost, quality of service, and congestion in deciding how best to deploy AVs geographically and temporally, leading to the identification of optimal AV fleet architectures and optimal operational policies. The research will also investigate, using micro-economic/game-theoretic analysis of the incentives of both users and service providers, likely scenarios of vehicle ownership and market structures and study the impact of each scenario on traffic measures including vehicle ownership and traffic volumes as well as societal measures including community health, equity, livability, and prosperity. This research will generate fundamental knowledge on the socioeconomic opportunities and impacts of the envisaged SCCS with shared AVs, and develop guidelines for adapting the design, deployment, and operation of AVs for future smart cities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.