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Mitigating Cascading Failures for Safety in Transportation Networks in the Era of Autonomous Vehicles
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2024-08-01
[PDF-999.29 KB]
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Edition:Final Report (July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024)
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Abstract:Bridge collapses, road closures, disruptions in the public transportation system, and major issues caused by autonomous vehicles (AVs) are everyday realities of our transportation infrastructure that not only cause inconvenience to the public but also constitute a major safety concern. When a particular component of the transportation system fails (e.g., due to an AV blocking a road), the failures and the associated congestion will likely be propagated to other parts of the transportation system, which may lead to further failures, and so on, potentially leading to a cascade of failures and a catastrophe in the whole city. Similarly, increasing deployment of AVs in the form of robo-taxis have not only led to several accidents but also events where seemingly confused AVs blocked certain roads for several hours. Given also the fact that increased congestion levels will likely lead to an increase in traffic incidents, there is a clear need for a better understanding of the impact of these cascading failures on the safety of the transportation system and the role that AVs play, both positive and negative, in them. This project aims to study the cascading effects of transportation network failures with an eye towards developing mitigation policies that maximize overall public safety. We are particularly interested in accounting for the increased presence of AVs, both to understand their impact on initiating or amplifying these failures, and to reveal how AVs can help mitigate cascading failures. Building on prior results where the goal was to minimize the overall delay/congestion, this project aims to reveal the impact of AVs on the safety of the overall transportation system by developing a comprehensive model that quantifies the safety impact of different failure events while taking into account the potential cascading effects.
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