Inaugural lecture Thomas Kjær Rasmussen

Behaviour, Systems, and Society: Towards Evidence-Based Transport Forecasts

The transport system forms the backbone of modern societies, connecting people, businesses, and opportunities. It, however, also stands at the centre of some of our most pressing societal challenges: congestion, emissions, equity, and health. Addressing these challenges requires informed decisions and policies grounded in scientific understanding of how people travel, and how transport systems function as a whole.

Modern transport systems are however complex and dynamic, consisting of heterogeneous travellers moving through large, congestible and multi-modal networks. Predicting how such systems respond to infrastructure changes or policies is therefore far from straightforward. Evidence-based mathematical models provide a means to untangle this complexity, offering insights into traveller behaviour and system performance that can support better and more sustainable transport planning.

In this lecture, Thomas Kjær Rasmussen will show how evidence-based modelling of travel behaviour - grounded in observed patterns of how people actually travel - can provide robust decision support for policy makers to help shaping a better future. By developing models that consistently represent how people make travel decisions, and how these interact within the wider transport system, we can better predict the effects of policies such as road pricing or investments in cycling infrastructure. Drawing on new and increasingly rich data sources - such as large-scale GPS data for cars, trucks, and bicycles - these models can capture both behavioural and contextual factors with unprecedented detail. This is work that spans theory, empirical analysis, and practical implementation.

Thomas Kjær Rasmussen is Professor in Transport Behaviour Modelling, and the lecture will be in English.