Lead Supervisor name: Professor Edmond Prakash

Research and develop a novel Coach Intelligent Transport Systems (CITS), to automate the process of (a) transport planning; (b) mine for useful data; and (c) enable automated decision making.

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) provide the means to improve service quality, safety and management of transport systems, allowing existing infrastructure capacity to be used more efficiently and safely by a coach company or a group of coach companies. Coach Intelligent Transport Systems (CITS) comprise several combinations of communication, computer and control technology developed and applied in the domain of transport to improve system performance, transport safety, efficiency, productivity, level of service, environmental impacts, energy consumption, and mobility. The CITS can play particularly vital roles in ensuring mobility for all and meeting demand in increasingly competitive markets. The need for such solutions stems from existing traffic and transport problems including congestion, accidents, lack of user information, lack of communications and decision-support for operators.

The primary focus will be on transport planning, tool design to produce forecasts for passengers and vehicles using a combination of modelling techniques on transport demand forecasting and scenario building and to make advanced transport models.

The second part will be to develop a mining tool to analyse the datasets in the transportation domain, some of them historical and captured by the coach company, as well as others that are gathered from external sources. This will lead to identify pattern or hot spots that can be fed into decision making.

The final decision making system will be an agent or group of agents that automatically interact/transact both internal to the coach organisation and in some instances to other organisations or coach companies.

The outcome of this PhD will be a tangible system that comprises the above three components of (a) intelligent transport planning; (b) data mining; and (c) automated decision making to enable transactions based on the knowledge discovered from the mined data.

What does the funded studentship include?

Funded candidates will receive a maintenance grant of £14,000 per annum (unless otherwise specified), to cover their living expenses and have their fees waived for 36 months. In addition, research costs, including field work and conference attendance, will be met.

Funded Studentships are open to both UK/EU and International students unless otherwise specified.

Eligibility criteria

Candidates for funded PhD studentship must demonstrate outstanding qualities and be motivated to complete a PhD in 3 years.

All candidates must satisfy the University’s minimum doctoral entry criteria for studentships of an honours degree at Upper Second Class (2.1) and/or an appropriate Master’s degree. An IELTS (Academic) score of 6.5 minimum (or equivalent) is essential for candidates for whom English is not their first language.

In addition to satisfying basic entry criteria, BU will look closely at the qualities, skills and background of each candidate and what they can bring to their chosen research project in order to ensure successful and timely completion. 

Closing date: The first call for applications will close on 9 April 2015.

For further information on how to apply click the ‘Apply’ button below or emailpgradmissions<στο>bournemouth.ac.uk