Department / Institute: Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (D-BAUG)
Dr. Anastasios Kouvelas | Traffic Engineering and Control
Dr. Anastasios Kouvelas is the Director of the Traffic Engineering and Control research group at the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems (IVT), Dept. of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, ETH Zurich (since August 2018). Prior to joining IVT, he was a Research Scientist at the Urban Transport Systems Laboratory (LUTS), EPFL (2014-2018), and a Postdoctoral Fellow with Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH) at the University of California, Berkeley (2012–2014).
Exploiting Digitalisation to Plan Interventions on Large Water Distribution Networks
Cities rely heavily on the services provided by water distribution networks. These networks are large and complex, consisting of thousands of kilometres of buried pipes and dozens of facilities where water is treated, pumped and stored. Infrastructure managers are entrusted with the planning and execution of interventions on More
Projektstart: Historische Dynamik von Siedlungs- und Lebensraumnetzwerken
Während Siedlungsnetzwerke im vergangenen Jahrhundert wuchsen, schrumpften vor allem Lebensraumnetzwerke. Im neuen SNF-Projekt EMPHASES werden wir die Dynamik dieser Netzwerke im Schweizer Mittelland untersuchen, indem wir historische topographische Karten klassifizieren. Wir werden langfristige Regelmässigkeiten und plötzliche Veränderungen im Wachstum oder in der Schrumpfung dieser Netzwerke analysieren.
Neues Video über das Institut für Raum- und Landschaftsentwicklung
Neben dem Lehrstuhl für Planung von Landschaft und Urbanen Systemen (Prof. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey) sind in den letzten Jahren zwei neue Forschungsgruppen im Institut für Raum- und Landschaftsentwicklung entstanden: Raumentwicklung und Stadtpolitik (Prof. David Kaufmann) und Spatial Transformation Laboratories (PD. Dr. Joris Van Wezemael). Ein neues Video stellt die More
Infoveranstaltung CAS Verkehrsingenieurwesen
ValPar.CH
Values of the ecological infrastructure in Swiss parks Commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), the interdisciplinary research team in charge of the research project ValPar.CH examines the benefits and added values of the ecological infrastructure (EI) in parks of national importance. This network of More
GLOBESCAPE
Enabling transformation: Linking design and land system science to foster place-making in peri-urban landscapes under increasing globalization. Unprecedented urbanization is threatening landscape diversity, bringing along new social and environmental problems. Standardized business centers, single family residential areas and shopping malls displace highly productive agricultural land, while the culture More
EMPHASES
Nature and biodiversity are not only essential for the existence of human societies, but are also threatened by the expansion of cities and transport infrastructure. As much as human societies depend on networks of settlements that are well connected by roads and rail (i.e. settlement networks), animal species More
Future-proofing strategies FOr RESilient transport networks against Extreme Events (FORESEE)
System-wide transportation risks are not well understood across modes, regions, and critical interdependent sectors, creating uncertainty about risks resulting from a major system disruption. There is a lack of resilience schemes, especially for the long term, integrated into transport infrastructure due to an inability to monetize resilience for More
disP 56/4, December 2020
NSL Veranstaltungsplakat Frühjahrssemester 2021
Introducing Ecosystem Services-Design Loop
Until recently, urban planners and designers gave little consideration to the multifunctional design of green spaces. This was partly because quantitative information about the extent of ecosystem benefits was not readily accessible to landscape professionals. Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), Singapore-ETH Centre has developed an ‘Ecosystem Services-Design Loop’ that More
New Agendas Under Planetary Urbanisation: Designing Sustainable Agri-Urbanisms
What is the future of the manifold agricultural territories across the world that support contemporary cities? While discussions on urban sustainability have focused on cities and urban regions, many agricultural territories are equally exposed to rapid and far-reaching urban transformation processes with massive social and environmental implications, opening More
Thinking Future Systems
FCL Global addresses the globally significant challenges of expanding urbanisation and aims to create a better understanding of the relationship between the city and its surrounding region, so as to make city-regions more sustainable. Following FCL Global’s Launch Event on 2 March 2021, FCL Global Co-Director Professor Sacha More
COVID-19 and the Dilemma of Transport Policy Making
This short paper sets out the basic dilemma of transport policy making today, as how to strike the balance between the benefits of accessibility and the induced externalities in terms of sprawl, greenhouse gas emissions and congestion. The impacts of the Corona19 pandemic sharpens the dilemma.
FCL Global Tana – Co-designing a Blue-green Future for the Agro-urban City of Antananarivo
The capital city of Madagascar, Antananarivo, is a high-altitude city. Traditionally, the Merina culture settled on hills dominating rice cultivation in the plains. However, urban growth is changing this landscape fast as city dwellers are more and more settling in the rice plain. This growth also raises the More
CUARZO: Cities, Urban Planning and Architecture in the Reconstruction of the 0 Zones
The Impact of Land-use Legacies and Recent Management on Natural Disturbance Susceptibility in Mountain Forests
Mountain forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration and protection from natural hazards. Forest cover in the European Alps has increased over the last century, but in recent years, these forests have experienced an increasing rate of natural disturbances by agents such as windthrow, More
Evaluating Initial Building Designs Considering Possible Future Changes and Decision Flexibility: The Example of The New PET Centre of the University Hospital of Zurich
The uncertainty on the future treatments demand, recently evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, makes it challenging for hospitals managers to determine the optimal design of new clinics. Flexibility can help in optimally minimizing the service risks when the benefits of the investments justify the costs, considering the dynamism of treatment More
Quantitative Evaluation of Highway Designs Considering Uncertainties in Future Mobility Patterns and Flexibility Using Real Options
Road owners are increasingly being confronted with the need to optimize highway design for an uncertain future. A recent research project at the Infrastructure Management Chair investigated the use of a real options-based method to evaluate alternative highway designs for a fictive case study based on the A15 More
Urban Policy Analysis: Theoretical and Empirical Developments
Densification: Acceptance and Socio-Economic Effects of Urban Development
Grenzen überschreiten – Räume aktivieren. Transnationale Ansätze der Raumplanung in Europa
Die Herausforderungen der europäischen Raumentwicklung sind nur in transdisziplinärer Kooperation zu bewältigen. In einem sich dynamisch verändernden Europa mit seinen komplexen Wandlungsprozessen sind neue, integrierende Planungs- und Entwurfsansätze gefragt, um den Zusammenhalt zwischen den Ländern und Regionen zu stärken.
Urban Policy Analysis: Theoretical and Empirical Developments: Call for Papers
Call for Papers by 29 January 2021. This is a call for papers for the panel Urban policy analysis: Theoretical and empirical developments that David Kaufmann (ETH Zürich) and Mara Sidney (Rutgers University) organize at the 5th International Conference on Public Policy in Barcelona from 6-8 July 2021.
Focus Policy
Inward development calls for open modes of governance After fifty years of spatial development not sustainable with regard to land use, energy consumption, or infrastructure costs, the only alternative to overcome this development is to transform and advance existing spatial structures. Historically, Switzerland has evolved from a landscape More
Focus Design
The Spatial Transformation and Design unit explores processes and potentials of spatial transformation and its consequences from neighbourhoods to transnational scales. Its research focuses on mechanics of change and methods for collaborative processes of spatial transformation using design as a key element dealing with complex problem situations.
disP 56/3, September 2020
The Role of Information to Passengers in Public Transport Disruptions
During public transport disruptions, the performance of the public transport network is degraded due to unexpected events, resulting in delays and inconvenience for passengers. Therefore, the infrastructure managers and operating companies typically generate a new public transport timetable, called disposition timetable, to reduce passengers’ delays, thereby limiting a More
Identifying Changes in Bicycle Accident Trends Using GIS and Time Series Information in the City of Zürich
This paper presents a case study based on accident reports from the Zurich City Police. Using a joint GIS and time series analysis based on negative binomial regression, the data is analyzed to identify trends in accident development for several accident subgroups (e.g., bicycle accidents, senior citizen accidents, More
Considering Automated Vehicle Deployment Uncertainty in the Design of Optimal Parking Garages Using Real Options
Parking garages are often currently designed assuming that parking demand will be stable over their lifetime. The looming mobility shift towards automated vehicles (AVs), however, makes parking demand highly uncertain, with some scenarios leading to its complete disappearance at some time in the near future. The design of More
Sustainable Funding Strategies for Stormwater Infrastructure Management: A System Dynamics Model
Most cities in Canada do not charge a stormwater fee; consequently, stormwater programs may need to compete with other funding priorities in public works. This often leads to a lack of dedicated and predictable cash flow, which can limit municipalities’ capacity to sustain stormwater services.
Aktualisierung Raum+ Kanton Obwalden
Raum+ schafft sachliche Grundlagen zur Übersicht von freien Baulandreserven. Im Kanton Obwalden wurde 2016 eine Ersterhebung durchgeführt. Im Sommer 2020 wurde der gesamte Perimeter aktualisiert. Dabei sind die Gespräche mit den Gemeindevertreter*innen ein zentraler Ansatz der Methode. Die aktualisierten Daten sind auf der Raum+-Plattform aufgeschaltet und stehen den More
Participatory Multi-objective Optimization for Planning Dense and Green Cities
In many cities around the world, urban ecosystem services (UES) are under pressure. With a growing urban population, the pressure on UES in the remaining open spaces increases. The planning of new residential areas to accommodate urban dwellers increasingly requires the consideration of UES, especially when taking into More
3D DSS for Supporting the Planning of Electric Power Systems
In a cooperation between the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation (IKG) and the Chair of Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS) a 3D Decision Support System (3D DSS) has been developed as a communication tool to support the planning of power lines. Now the 3D DSS has More
Transforming Knowledge Systems for Life on Earth: Visions of Future Systems and how to get there
Formalised knowledge systems are important but arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future More
Communicating Railway Delays and Adjusted Timetables: the Role of Incomplete Information to Passengers in Railway Operations
In case of railway delays, train operating companies update the planned timetable to the actual disturbed conditions to keep offering high quality services to travellers. Passengers face an adjusted service, and corrective actions (a disposition timetable). This communication is often assumed to be perfect, complete and immediate, which More
The influence of non-traffic variables on mode choice (SVI 2015/007)
In transportation planning and policy, the effects of non-traffic variables – namely, any qualitative and cognitive-emotional characteristics of households and individuals that cannot be measured directly – on the choice of traffic modes, have hardly been considered so far. If the non-traffic variables were better known in practical More
Substitute Behaviour of Rail and Bus Passengers Travelling Long Distances (+50km) in Switzerland
In transportation planning and policy, the effects of non-traffic variables – namely, any qualitative and cognitive-emotional characteristics of households and individuals that cannot be measured directly – on the choice of traffic modes, have hardly been considered so far. If the non-traffic variables were better known in practical More
MOBIS-COVID-19. Mobility behaviour in Switzerland – Coronavirus study
To slow down the spread of the coronavirus, the population has been instructed to stay at home if possible. This measure consequently has a major impact on our daily mobility behaviour. But who is being affected, and how? The MOBIS-COVID-19 research project, an initiative of ETH Zurich and More
Agent-based tracking of disease spread with dynamic models of travel behaviour in a pandemic
Epidemic models are essential tools to coordinate all aspects of the response to pandemics. Models can inform policy makers on strategies for vaccinations and testing, but also to trigger mitigation measure such as the ‘lockdowns’ used during the COVID-19 outbreak in Switzerland. Here, we propose to use and More
MaaS Bundle Design
Mobility service bundling has received a lot of attention recently due to its centrality to Mobility as a Service (MaaS) business models and potential to foster sustainable travel behavior. Despite an increasing number of academic studies and commercial trials, however, there is a surprising dearth of research on More
Urban Design and the Technological Shift in Transportation
Urbane Transformationen
The Gotthard – a Natural Obstacle
The content of the film is only available in German, French and Italian. The Gotthard has been the site of several major tunnel projects: the construction of the Gotthard railway tunnel, the Gotthard road tunnel, and the NEAT presented engineers with major challenges. Each of the tunnels shortened More
A Modern Industrial Landscape
The content of the film is only available in German, French and Italian. The rising prosperity emerging in the course of the economic miracle lasted until the oil shock of 1973: rising consumption as well as increasing space and energy consumption were changing the landscape. Link to the More
The Grosses Moos Airport
The content of the film is only available in German, French and Italian. The Grosses Moos area had been intensively cultivated ever since the Jura water corrections. Grosses Moos is one of the largest plains in Switzerland and, thus, had become the locale of several projects requiring large More
Relocation of a Residential Building
The A2 motorway connecting Switzerland to Germany was routed through the northern neighbourhoods of Basel – houses had to be demolished to make room for the motorway. Meanwhile, the motorway has been placed underground and this upvalues the urban neighbourhoods. Link to the archives of Memobase
The Scarcity of Living Space
The content of the film is only available in German, French and Italian. In the 1960s, there was a housing shortage. People increasingly moved from the countryside to the cities, and the increase of ever smaller households and the influx of foreign workers outnumbered the newly created housing. More