Towards a Smart-City Future: Urban-Scale Integration of Mobility and Energy Systems

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The vision of "smart city" has been pursued worldwide to transform urban habitats into superior efficiency, quality and sustainability. Moving forward to a smart-city future, cities in Canada and around the world are undertaking major transformations in their energy and mobility systems. The booms of the sharing economy, electric vehicles (EV), decentralized renewables integration, along with the emergence of autonomous driving, urge us to evaluate the implications of their synergy. The long-term goal of this proposed research program is to develop cross-disciplinary models, data analytics and managerial insights for urban-scale integration of mobility and energy systems to maximize citywide benefits. We will pursue this mission by focusing on two interrelated research themes: Theme 1 - Designing urban mobility systems featuring large-scale EV adoption. Theme 2 - Citywide integration of EVs to electrical grid infrastructure in the presence of new energy and mobility technologies.   Theme 1 research will develop a holistic framework of designing and analyzing large-scale EV sharing systems for urban transit. Although car sharing has been maturing and received great attention in the literature, EV sharing is still in its infant stage. The proposed research program will provide integrated optimization models, advanced solution algorithms and practical managerial insights for infrastructure planning and fleet operations management for urban-scale EV sharing. In a parallel effort, Theme 2 research will evaluate the potential of EV mobility for supporting future urban electrical grid infrastructure.  In particular, the proposed research program will develop models and analytics to investigate with what control strategies and under what mechanisms shared autonomous electric vehicles (SAEV) can improve the self-sufficiency and resilience of urban microgrids (in which electricity producers and consumers are clustered into delimited local networks). This joint dispatch of urban EV stock with microgrid operations can potentially exert large impact on the future urban energy and mobility landscape, but has not been well considered in the literature. The outcome of this research program will not only advance the emerging field of smart-city operations management, but also be among the first to help practitioners and city planners to launch EV sharing programs and facilitate deeper integration of urban mobility and energy systems. The research program will provide excellent training for two HQP given its interdisciplinary nature. The training will be further enriched by our close collaborations with other institutes such as UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.