Time

Friday, 1:40 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Location

1605 Tilia, Room 1103, West Village

Speaker(s)

Maria Kamargianni, PhD Candidate, Travel Demand Modeler, University of the Aegean, co-author of the winning paper of the TRB Kitamura award

Abstract

Although we may know the demographic and economic characteristics of underage students’ families and the communities in which they live and attend school, we have little scientific evidence of the individual teenagers’ activities, travel behavior and attitudes. In traditional societies there was comparatively little discrepancy between adolescents and adults because they grew up in comparable worlds. However, with rapid change and social media bringing the outside world into teenagers’ lives, larger generational differences are emerging. The scope of the presented survey is to develop an advanced Stated Preferences (SP) survey, customized to capture teenagers’ behaviors and estimate hybrid mode choice models, in which the utilities depend both on the attributes of the mode, as well as on latent variables. The data used for the model estimation is collecting directly by teenagers (12 to 18 years old) and not their parents. The model estimation results are used to forecast teenagers’ modal split under various policies targeting to promote active transport.

Reference of the awarded paper: Kamargianni M., and A. Polydoropoulou (2013). “Development of a Hybrid Choice Model to Investigate the Effects of Teenagers’ Attitudes
 Towards Walking and Cycling on Mode Choice Behavior.” Transportation Research Record. Available at: http://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=1242645.

More about the Ryuichi Kitamura Paper Award here  

Biographical Sketch

Maria is a travel demand modeler. She is about to finish her PhD studies at the Department of Shipping, Trade and Transport of the University of the Aegean, in Greece. She currently works as a research associate in Transport and Energy at the UCL Energy Institute, London, UK. Her PhD thesis focuses on the development of advanced Hybrid Choice Models (HCM) to investigate the factors affecting teenagers travel behavior and especially the choice of active transport (walking and cycling). 
Her areas of research include travel behavior modeling, transportation systems analysis, demand analysis, road safety, market research and econometrics. She has extensive experience in survey design, sampling design, data handling, and modeling combined Revealed Preferences (RP) and Stated Preferences (SP) discrete choice models, as well as latent variable models in which the attitudes and perceptions of decision makers are taken into account in the choice process. She has worked on various transportation projects in Europe and worldwide. She organizes and co-organizes workshops and campaigns about active transport, green transportation and road safety.

In 2010, she was awarded with the Bronze Medal in YEAR2010 (Young European Arena of Research 2010 – the pan-European contest for young researchers in the transport sector that is organized by Transport Research Arena-TRA) for her research “Exploring Teenagers’ Travel and Driving Behavior in Rural Areas”.

In 2013, she was awarded with the Best Student Paper Award by the Journal of Choice Modelling for the paper “Does Social Networking Substitute for or Stimulate Teenagers’ Travel? Findings from a Latent Class Model” (Sydney, 2013).

She and her supervisor Prof. Amalia Polydoropoulou also received the 2013 Ryuichi Kitamura Award by the Travel Analysis Methods Section of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). The award ceremony will take place in Washington DC, in January 2014. The awarded paper is “Development of a Hybrid Choice Model to Investigate the Effects of Teenagers’ Attitudes
 Towards Walking and Cycling on Mode Choice Behavior.”

You can find more information about Maria at: www.kamargianni.com