System Design Process for Multi-layered Transport Networks

1 . A computer-implemented method for designing a multimodal transport network, the method comprising steps of:

generating an optimized transport network design by optimizing a multimodal communicability measure by adapting active edges of at least one of layers of the transport network; and

outputting the optimized transport network design.

2 . The computer-implemented method according to claim 1 , further comprising steps of:

obtaining a current state of the transport network;

obtaining past congestion information of the transport network;

obtaining event information on planned events in an area of the transport network;

evaluating velocity information of transport movement along edges of a graph including plural layers representing the multimodal transport network based on at least the obtained current state of the transport network;

predicting congestion levels for the edges of the transport network based on the obtained current state of the transport system, the obtained past congestion information, the obtained event information and the evaluated velocity information;

computing weights for the edges based on the predicted congestion levels and associating the computed weights with the edges of the plural layers of the multimodal transport network; and

computing the multimodal communicability measure based on the computed weights associated with the edges of the plural layers of the multimodal transport network.

3 . The computer-implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein the method further comprises a step of

adding a layer based on an additional mode of transport to the graph of the multimodal transport network, and

generating the optimized transport network design for the multimodal transport network including the added layer based on the additional mode of transport.

4 . The computer-implemented method according to claim 3 , wherein

the added layer based on the additional mode of transport adds an urban air mobility transport network to the multimodal transport network.

5 . The computer-implemented method according to claim 3 , wherein

in the step of generating the optimized transport network design by optimizing the multimodal communicability measure, active edges of the added layer based on the additional mode of transport are adapted.

6 . The computer-implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein the method comprises

receiving a planning process initiation message at predetermined time intervals during operation of the multimodal transport network, and

automatically starting generating the optimized transport network design when receiving the planning process initiation message.

7 . The computer-implemented method according to claim 1 , wherein

the multimodal communicability measure is configured to incentivize paths that use multiple modes of transport and to penalize paths that require many transfers between different modes of transport.

8 . The computer-implemented method according to claim 1 , wherein the method comprises

computing the multimodal communicability measure G pq based on

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with P pq representing a number of paths of a length s between nodes p and q, w pq (k) denoting a weight of paths of a length k, M pq is a number of different modes of transport used in the path between the nodes p and q, T pq is a number of transfers along the path between the nodes p and q, parameter a denoting a weighting factor that controls a balance between incentivizing multimodal paths and penalizing transfers.

9 . A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium embodying a program of machine-readable instructions executable by a digital processing apparatus, wherein the program, when executed on the digital processing apparatus, causes the digital processing apparatus to perform the steps according to claim 1 .