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               Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management

                       The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Date: Friday Sep 23, 2022, 16:30 HK time

Venue: ERB 513, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Title: Urban rail transit operations with use of reinforcement learning

Speaker: Prof. Andy H. F. Chow, Advanced Design and Systems Engineering, City University of Hong Kong

Abstract:

In this talk, we will present some recent work on use of reinforcement learning (RL) techniques for managing urban rail transit operations with limited rolling stock in a stochastic environment. The problem considered herein is modelled as a Markov decision process. With consideration of the issue of 'curses of dimensionality', we develop a RL-based computational framework which reduces the complexity of the evaluation and searching processes for potential optimal operational policies in real time by parameterizing the state and decision spaces. The proposed approach is tested with real-world scenarios in local MTR service networks. Experiment results illustrate the advantages of the proposed method over a range of situations with unexpected uncertainties including the pandemic scenarios. This study innovates urban rail transit operations with state-of-the-art computer science and dynamic optimization techniques.

Biography:

Dr. Andy Chow is an Assistant Professor in Systems Engineering at City University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on design and operations of intelligent transport and logistics systems with applications of emerging information and computing technologies. He is a Board Member of the Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies (HKSTS), Vice-President of the Operational Research Society of Hong Kong (ORSHK), Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), and Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTHK). Before returning to Hong Kong, Dr. Chow has held academic and research positions at University College London in the U.K., and University of California Berkeley under the California PATH program in the U.S.

Everyone is welcome to attend the talk!

SEEM-5201 Website: http://seminar.se.cuhk.edu.hk

Email: seem5201@se.cuhk.edu.hk