ADS & AMDS Webinar | COVID-19 and Capacity Modelling in Public Transport

Amsterdam Data Science (ADS) and Amsterdam Medical Data Science (AMDS) are co-hosting a new lecture series in collaboration with Elsevier and Google to explore The Power and Weakness of Data Modelling in COVID-19.  

Aims of this series:

  • Showcase the power and limitations of data centred approaches
  • Jointly understand and learn from the different COVID approaches and views
  • Shape the time for Data Science research/education after the lock-down

Lecture 5: COVID-19 and capacity modelling in public transport

Since Mark Rutte’s press conference on March 12, many people are studying and working from home. As a consequence, the number of passengers using public transport has significantly dropped. On Friday March 13, the number of passengers was 85% lower than on a regular Friday. The following week, the reduction was even larger. At the same time, the percentage of employee illness increased significantly.

In this presentation, we will first talk about the short-term challenges NS faced. From March 21 to June 1, NS operated a significantly reduced timetable. We will discuss how this timetable was designed and how advanced algorithms were used to construct this timetable (and the steps to return to the normal timetable) and the related rolling stock and crew schedules.

We will also talk about the challenges that NS will face in the coming years. Passenger demand will be reduced in the coming years due to the economic depression, other behaviour (working from home and online lectures) and passengers’ fear of using public transport. To get better predictions on travel behaviour, NS started a large customer survey on passenger behaviour after the COVID-19 crisis. We will present the first results of this survey and the expected impact on NS.

Programme
12:00 Welcome & Introduction
12:05 Talk by Dennis Huisman and Menno de Bruyn
12:40 Q&A
13:00 End!

Moderators
Marc Salomon (ABS UvA, ADS) and Mark Hoogendoorn (VU, AMDS)

Speakers
Dennis Huisman is Expertise Manager Logistic Processes at NS and Endowed Professor Public Transport Optimization at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Menno de Bruyn is Team Lead Transportation Research at NS

Date: Thursday 2 July 2020
Time: 12:00-13:00

Zoom details to follow soon.