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Transportation in Contemporary Society: A Complex Systems Approach

Joseph M. Sussman PhD '67: March 9, 2010; Running Time: 1:05:24

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

In the nineteen fifties and sixties, students of transportation focused on building infrastructure and applied lessons from the physical sciences to designing mobility. Mobility was facilely linked to the engines of economic growth and expanding GDP. In time, that perspective was replaced by a focus on transportation systems and networks. There was a newfound emphasis on environmental impacts, land use, and intermodal freight. There was also a growing concern on unpriced externalities. Today, Joseph Sussman explains, with many of those problems still unsolved, transportation has entered a new phase-- a period of immense complexity or CLIOS, which stands for complex, large scale, interconnected, open and sociotechical is an acronym that is becoming the mantra of transportation engineers. While it is not as far-reaching as "chaos" to a physicist, it is an approach with far-reaching consequences for the transportation field.

To participate in “Complexity 101” engineers must take account of stochastic systems, difficulties relating cause and effect, and non-linear behaviors. They must also recognize complex feedback loops between macro and micro issues; time scale anomalies, and evaluative complexity brought by new stakeholders. Sussman observes, “ Even if we could wish away behavioral complexity, it would not mean that we know what we should do.” He says that transportation engineering must now embrace management, the social sciences and planning and he warns us eschew narrow representations of complex systems because they are implicitly easier to solve.

Sussman walks us through the new tools of math and advanced technology which have evolved with with CLIOS. In earlier times engineers could not respond with full information, disaggregate demand analysis, or real time operational data. He cites the need to apply these to find new solutions and designs--particularly ones that incorporate flexibility, reliability, and sustainability. Sussman terms these the “bilities”. Taking flexibility as an example, he notes that some transportation providers, and particularly the airlines, are creating tailored and customized services for users. Sussman poses whether the concept of flexibility could be extended to highway travel and “ pay as you go”. Likewise, in automobile design, we are moving away from crash worthiness to a concept of crash avoidance. At a more macro level, Sussman says that we can now solve problems of a scale that seemed unthinkable 5 or 10 years, i.e., problems that were seen to be beyond our computational scope.

Sussman observes a growing connection between economics and transportation. “We are moving toward a period where new technology and mathematical solutions allow us to better recognize and value previously un-priced externalities”. Increasingly, he views transportation as a regionally scaled enterprise that can be managed at the scale of the metropolitan regional level. That aligns us, he says, with economists who have long talked about metro based regions as the economic engine of society. He also says there is a need for a large national vision on the scale of the one that created the national highway infrastructure. Sussman endorses the view that the American people yearn for a big vision and are tired of cycles of crisis and doom.

Lecture Details

Location: 3-270

About the Speaker

Joseph M. Sussman PhD '67

JR East Professor Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems

Joseph Sussman specializes in the study of “Complex, Large-Scale, Interconnected, Open, Sociotechnical” (CLIOS) Systems, working in many applications areas, and has developed the CLIOS Process to study such systems. He has focused recently on developing a new methodology for regional strategic transportation planning (RSTP) as a special case of the CLIOS Process, integrating ideas from strategic management, scenario-building, and technology architectures, and applying it to cases in the U.S. and abroad. Currently his work in this area deals with transportation, technology and sustainability in Mexico City and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and most recently in Portugal.

Dr. Sussman earned a B.C.E. from the City College of New York in 1961, an M.S.C.E. from the University of New Hampshire in 1963, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering Systems from MIT in 1967. He joined the MIT faculty in 1967. From 1977 to 1979, Professor Sussman served as the Associate Dean of Engineering for Educational Programs. From 1980 to 1985, he served as Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at MIT. From 1986 to 1991, he served as Director of the Center for Transportation Studies (CTS) at MIT. During his term, research volume grew by 400 percent, to more than $4 million annually at that time, reflecting an important expansion of CTS’s research agenda.

Dr. Sussman is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Transportation Research Forum, the Transportation Research Board (Executive Committee chair in 1994; member, 1991–1998), ITS America (Board of Directors, 1995–2001) and ITS Massachusetts (Board of Directors, 1996–2001). He co-founded Multisystems of Cambridge, MA in 1966 (now part of Transystems).

Joseph M. Sussman PhD '67

Sussman at CEE

About the Host

About the Host

Transportation@MIT

Transportation@MIT is a coordinated effort to address one of civilization’s most pressing challenges: the environmental impact of the world’s ever-increasing demand for transportation.

Building on MIT’s rich tradition of engineering research and interdisciplinary collaboration, the initiative knits together the wide-ranging, robust research already under way at the Institute and creates new opportunities for education and innovation.