COmpetition models and cross-Subsidies for equitable and green MObility - COSMO

由于基础设施超载导致用户不满、污染、不平等加剧和健康危险，移动系统正处于革命的边缘。仅在伦敦，每年就有5900人死于二氧化氮，每年的医疗成本为1.4亿英镑。基于这些原因，英国政府将未来交通确定为四大挑战之一。与此同时，新形式的移动和大数据的出现提供了巨大的机遇。在这种背景下，多式联运——不同的运输方式提供互补的服务——是一种很有前途的模式，因为它将高效的长途运输与最后一英里的服务相结合。然而，它们的行动也带来了同样多的挑战。最值得注意的是，交通部门正在努力理解如何将新的移动解决方案整合到现有的基础设施中，如何以一种有凝聚力的方式协调和管理它们，以及如何确定那些最终将提高公平性并减少系统范围内拥堵的解决方案。从本质上说，这些挑战源于这样一个事实，即私营交通服务提供商的目标往往与交通管理局的目标不一致（例如，利润最大化与拥堵/不平等最小化），并导致与现有交通方式的竞争，而不是互补。为了应对这些挑战，COSMO旨在开发数学模型来描述移动供应商之间的竞争，分析这些模型，并利用它们来设计基于优化和诱导合作的补贴，以协调供应商的利益与提高公平性、减少拥堵或两者的结合。更详细地说，第一个组成部分将提供三方面的内聚贡献：i)为不同移动提供商之间的竞争建立一个简明的博弈论模型，ii)研究由此产生的均衡，以及iii)设计有效的均衡计算算法。在第一部分的基础上，第二部分将利用优化和博弈论方面的最新突破，设计基于优化的交叉补贴，在最大化公平性和最小化拥堵/排放之间进行权衡。这两个组成部分最终将发布一个开放获取的算法套件，其有效性将在美国城市和格林威治自治市的综合和现实案例研究中进行测试，并与项目合作伙伴共同分享和开发。本着这一呼吁的精神，该研究将与智能交通领域的领导者（Pavone博士，斯坦福大学和NVIDIA研究中心）和交通领域的领导者（Osorio博士，HEC蒙特利尔和b谷歌研究中心）密切合作，与他们共同设计了许多网络活动，包括对斯坦福大学和HEC蒙特利尔的长期访问，每日访问和邀请在NVIDIA研究中心和谷歌研究中心进行演讲。

Mobility systems are on the brink of revolution as they suffer from an overloaded infrastructure causing users' dissatisfaction, pollution, increased inequality, health dangers. In London alone, exposure to NO2 accounts for 5900 fatalities/year, with healthcare costs of 1.4BGBP/year. For these reasons, the UK Government identified Future Mobility as one of the four Grand Challenges.At the same time, the advent of new forms of mobility and big data provides remarkable opportunities. In this context, Intermodal Mobility -- where different modes of transport provide complementary services -- is a promising paradigm, as it combines efficient long-distance transport with last-mile services.However, their operation has resulted in equally many challenges. Most notably, transportation authorities struggle to understand how new mobility solutions should be integrated within the existing infrastructure, how to orchestrate and regulate them in a cohesive way, and how to identify those that will ultimately improve equitability and reduce system-wide congestion. At its core, these challenges stems from the fact that privately-owned mobility providers often have objectives that are misaligned with those of the transportation authority (e.g., maximise profit vs minimise congestion/inequity), and result in competing with existing modes of transport as opposed to complementing them.To address these challenges, COSMO aims to develop mathematical models to describe the competition between mobility providers, to analyse these models, and to exploit them to design optimisation-based and cooperation-inducing subsidies to reconcile the providers interest with that of improving equitability, minimising congestion, or a combination thereof.More in details, the first component will deliver a threefold set of cohesive contributions: i) the development of a concise game-theoretic model for competition between different mobility providers, ii) the study of the resulting equilibria, and iii) the design of efficient equilibrium computing algorithms. Building atop the first, the second component will leverage recent breakthroughs in optimization and game theory to design optimization-based cross-subsidies that trade-off between maximising equitability and minimising congestion/emissions.These two components will culminate in the release of an open-access algorithmic suite, whose effectiveness will be tested on synthetic and real-world case studies on US cities and the Borough of Greenwich, shared and developed jointly with project partners. In the spirit of this call, the research will be carried out in close collaboration with leaders in smart mobility (Dr. Pavone, Stanford University & NVIDIA Research) and transportation (Dr. Osorio, HEC Montreal & Google Research), with whom a number of networking activities have been co-designed including an extended visit at Stanford University and HEC Montreal, daily visits and invited talks at NVIDIA Research and Google Research.