Fatmi, Mahmudur

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Research Interests

• Travel Demand Forecasting
• Transportation and Land Use Interaction
• Travel Behaviour Analysis
• Smart and Shared Mobility
• Urban System Microsimulation
• Activity-Based Modelling
• Transportation and Residential Emissions And Energy Modelling
• Econometric Modelling
• Agent-Based Microsimulation, Survey Design and Methods

Current Research Projects

• Agent-based Microsimulation of Regional Transportation and Energy Systems: UiTR primarily focuses to develop a new generation agent-based integrated transportation and land use modelling system that integrates population demographics, location choice, vehicle ownership, and daily activities within a unified modelling framework to predict the changes in land use pattern, transportation network and the environment over time and space for an entire urban region. The model, known as STELARIS, has the capacity to test the impacts of unprecedented events such as COVID-19 and newer technologies such as autonomous and electric vehicle usage. The fundamental contribution of this research is to disentangle the interactions among transportation-related decisions and changes occurring at different stages of an individual’s life; for example, how our decisions of where to live interact with our decisions of how many vehicles to own and which travel mode to choose. Therefore, this tool simulates agents’ activities over time to predict the evolution and interactions among transportation decisions such as mode choice, land use configuration such as residential location choice, life-cycle events such as birth of a child, and their impacts on the urban environment such as vehicular emissions and residential energy consumption. This research develops advanced econometrics, machine learning and microsimulation modelling techniques to address the two-way feedback between transportation and land use decisions, which in-turn improves the predicting accuracy and consequently assists in effective transportation and land use policy making and infrastructure investment decision-making. A relevant example research output can be found below:
• Transportation and Climate Action Research: This inter-disciplinary research adopts an integrated approach to collect newer data and develop a novel modelling system to better assess travel, location choice and vehicle ownership behaviour, and emissions, followed by developing and testing emerging policies to reduce vehicular emissions. This study will evaluate the evolution and the longer-term effects of COVID-19 on travel behaviour including housing, vehicle ownership, in-home and out-of-home activities, mode choice, and how that impact the carbon footprint. The scope includes Metro Vancouver and Central Okanagan regions from BC. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the two UBC campuses are involved: Dr. Mahmudur Fatmi, Dr. Khalad Hasan, Dr. Andrea MacNeil, Dr. Rehan Sadiq, Dr. Kasun Hewage, Dr. Naomi Zimmerman, Dr. Jon Corbertt. The project also involves local, regional, provincial, and federal governments and agencies such as City of Kelowna, City of West Kelowna, City of Vancouver, District of North Vancouver, Metro Vancouver, Transport Canada, BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, among others. The project has been funded by the Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) under their Climate Action and Awareness Fund (CAAF).
• Activity Base Modelling: This research focuses on developing state-of-the-art travel demand forecasting models particularly, contributing to the development of an agent-based travel activity simulator. Activity-based modelling approach has been adopted to understand and predict individuals’ activities including in-home activities such as work-from-home and travel activities such as mode choice, vehicle choice, travel partner choice, and route choice decisions, among others. Alternative modelling methods are developed to better capture the interactions among individual’s decision-making processes and further translate such behaviour within a microsimulation environment for improved forecasting. We have also invested significant efforts to model the demand for sustainable alternative transportation options such as biking, as well as investigate the effects of unprecedented socio-economic shocks such as COVID-19 on travel demand. This research assists in developing strategies for travel demand management such as flexible working hours, and emissions reduction and investing in sustainable transportation modes.