Dr. Pitu B. Mirchandani - Routing, Logistics and Management of Recharging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles
Guest speaker Professor Pitu Mirchandani, presented a seminar at rCITI on Monday 23 May 2016.
Dr. Pitu B. Mirchandani [BS/MS degrees in Engineering, UCLA; S.M/ScD. Degrees, Operations Research, MIT] is a Professor of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) where he holds the AVNET Chair for Supply Chain Networks. He is also a Senior Sustainability Scientist within the Global Institute of Sustainability and the Director of Advanced Transportation and Logistics Systems (ATLAS) Research Center.
For close to 40 years, Pitu Mirchandani has been studying relevant problems on Dynamic Stochastic Networks, with interests in models and systems for making strategic/tactical/operational decisions in dynamic and stochastic networked environments. Problems related to traffic flows on transportation networks can be typically addressed as such. Mirchandani's contributions are in: (1) Location Decision Modeling, (2) Traveler and Vehicle Routing Models, (3) Real-time Data-Driven Decision Systems, and (4) general theoretical contributions to OR modeling, methods and algorithms.
He has authored/co-authored four books and approximately 200 articles. Dr. Mirchandani is a lifetime member of IEEE, a member of INFORMS, IIE, TRB, and a charter member of ITS-Arizona, where he was awarded the "Member of the Year" in 2007. He became a Fellow of INFORMS in 2015.
Dr. Mirchandani has been a principal investigator on a large number of research programs. Notable recent projects are in Real-Time Proactive Traffic Management, Adaptive Ramp Metering, Evacuation Traffic Management, Remote Sensing of Transportation Flows, and Infrastructure Design and Operations of Electric and Alternative Fueled Vehicles
Dr. Mirchandani presentation was on the Routing, Logistics and Management of Recharging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles. There is much reason to believe that many individuals and organizations will transform their vehicles to ones that utilize alternative fuels which are more sustainable. The electric vehicle (EV) is a good candidate for this transformation, especially which "refuels" by exchanging its spent batteries with charged ones. Unfortunately, although there is much research gone into technologies of EVs, little effort have gone into designing the battery charging-/ exchanging- infrastructure. This presentation discussed the issues that must be addressed, principally the issues related to the limited driving range of each electric vehicle's set of charged batteries and the possible detouring for battery exchanges. In particular, the talk addressed the optimization and analysis of infrastructure design alternatives dealing with:-
(1) the routing of vehicles from origins to destinations,
(2) the optimum locations of battery-exchange stations, and
(3) the recharging capacity and operations management of battery-exchange infrastructure.
Some infrastructure design and optimization models, and some results, were also discussed in the presentation.
