CEE Faculty Profile

Jorge A. Laval

Associate Professor

Affinity Group: Transportation Systems Engineering

Office: SEB 224
Phone: 404/894-2360
Email: jorge.laval@ce.gatech.edu
Web: http://trafficlab.ce.gatech.edu

Dr. Laval is an Assistant Professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Laval obtained his B.S. in Civil and Industrial Engineering from Uiversidad Catolica de Chile (1995), his M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley (2001), and his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley (2004).

Prior to joining Georgia Tech doctor Laval held two consecutive Postdoc positions at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley, and at the French National Institute for Safety and Transportation Research (INRETS). After obtaining his B.S. he worked as a transportation engineer for five years at the Chilean Ministry of Public Works, where he conducted numerous traffic and revenue studies for urban and inter-urban road concessions. Dr. Laval serves on the editorial board Transportation Research Part B.

Research Interests

  • Trafficflow theory
  • Numerical solution methods and simulation of traffic flow models
  • Queueing theory in transportation and dynamic congestion pricing

Education

  • Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, April 2004
  • Certificate in Logistics, University of California at Berkeley, December 2002
  • M.S., Transportation Engineering , University of California at Berkeley, May 2001
  • Universidad Católica de Chile - Santiago, Chile-Certificate in Urban Economics, December 1998
  • Universidad Católica de Chile - Santiago, Chile-Ingeniero Civil Industrial, Mención Transporte, July 1995

Honors

  1. Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program award (2011)
  2. SISS Grant, Berkeley (2001, 2002, 2003)
  3. A theory on the formation of oscillations in congested traffic. Dynamics Days Europe conference, Bristol, UK, Sep. 2010.

Articles

  1. S. Ahn, S Vadlamani and J. Laval. A method to account for non-steady state conditions in measuring traffic hysteresis. Transportation Research Part C, 2011, In Press.
  2. Chilukuri, B. R and Laval, J. A. Traffic Signal Volume Warrants – A Delay Perspective. Forthcoming in ITE Journal, 2011.
  3. Zheng, Z., Ahn, S., Chen, D., Laval, J. Freeway Traffic Oscillations: Microscopic Analysis of Formations and Propagations using Wavelet Transform. Transportation Research Part B, 45 (9), 1378-1388, 2011. (Also in the proceedings of the 19th International Symposium of Transportation and Traffic Theory.)
  4. L Leclercq, J Laval, N Chiabaut. Capacity Drops at Merges: an endogenous model. Forthcoming Transportation Research Part B, 2011.
  5. Zheng, Z., Ahn, S., Chen, D., Laval, J., Applications of wavelet transform for analysis of freeway traffic: bottlenecks, transient traffic, and traffic oscillations, Transportation Research Part B, 45(2): 372-384, 2011.
  6. J A Laval. Hysteresis in traffic flow revisited: an improved measurement method. Transportation Research Part B, 45(2): 385–391, 2011.
  7. Yin, Y., Lou, Y. and Laval, J. A. Optimal Dynamic Pricing Strategies for High-Occupancy/Toll Lanes. Transportation Research Part C, 19 (1): 64-74, 2011.
  8. Laval, J. A. and Leclercq, L. Mechanism to describe stop-and-go waves: A mechanism to describe the formation and propagation of stop-and-go waves in congested freeway traffic. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 368(1928): 4519-4541, 2010.
  9. Ahn, S., J. A. Laval and Cassidy, M. Effects of Merging and Diverging on Freeway Traffic Oscillations: Theory and Observation. Transportation Research Record 2188: 1-8, 2010.
  10. Laval, J. A. and Leclercq, L. Continuum Approximation for Congestion Dynamics Along Freeway Corridors. Transportation Science, 44(1): 87 – 97, 2010.
  11. Laval, J. A., Chen, D., Ben Amer, K., Guin, A and Ahn, S. Evolution of Oscillations in Congested Traffic: Improved Estimation Method and Additional Empirical Evidences. Transportation Research Record 2124:194-202, 2009.
  12. J. A. Laval. Effects of Geometric Design on Freeway Capacity: Impacts of Truck Lane Restrictions. Transportation Research Part B, 43 (6): 720-728, 2009.
  13. J A Laval. Graphical Solution and Continuum Approximation for the Single Destination Dynamic User Equilibrium Problem. Transportation Research Part B, 43 (1): 108-118, 2009.
  14. J A Laval and L Leclercq. Microscopic modeling of the relaxation phenomenon using a macroscopic lane-changing model. Transportation Research Part B, 42 (6):511-522, 2008.
  15. L Leclercq, N Chiabaut, J Laval, and C Buisson. Relaxation phenomenon after changing lanes: Experimental validation with NGSIM data set. Transportation Research Record 1999: 79-85, 2007.
  16. J A Laval. A macroscopic theory of two-lane rural roads. Transportation Research Part B, 40 (10): 937-944, 2006.
  17. J A Laval. Stochastic processes of moving bottlenecks: Approximate formulas for highway capacity. Transportation Research Record, 1988: 86-91, 2006.
  18. J A Laval and C F Daganzo. Lane-changing in traffic streams. Transportation Research Part B, 40 (3): 251-264, 2006.
  19. J C Muñoz and J A Laval. System optimum dynamic traffic assignment graphical solution method for a congested freeway and one destination. Transportation Research Part B, 40 (1): 1-15, 2006.
  20. C F Daganzo and J A Laval. On the numerical treatment of moving bottlenecks. Transportation Research Part B, 39 (1): 31-46, 2005.
  21. C F Daganzo and J A Laval. Moving bottlenecks: A numerical method that converges in flows. Transportation Research Part B, 39 (9): 855-863, 2005.
  22. S Ahn, M Cassidy, and J A Laval. Verification of a simplified car-following theory. Transportation Research Part B, 38 (5): 431-440, 2004.
  23. C F Daganzo, J A Laval, and JC Muñoz. Some ideas for freeway congestion mitigation with advanced technologies. Traffic Engineering and control, 10 (43): 397-403, 2002.

Proceedings

  1. M. Mallick, S. Rubin and J. A. Laval. N-body Filtering for Road Tracking using a Car Following Model. In Proceedings: 14th International Conference on Information Fusion. Chicago, July 2011.
  2. Laval, J. A. Hysteresis in the fundamental diagram: impact of measurement methods. In Proceedings: International Workshop on Traffic data Collection & its Standardization. Barcelona, Spain, September 2008.
  3. L Leclercq, J Laval, and E Chevallier. The Lagrangian coordinate system and what it means for first order traffic flow models. In B Heydecker, M Bell, and R Allsop, editors, 17th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory (ISTTT), pages 735-753. Elsevier, New York, 2007.
  4. L Leclercq and J A Laval. A multiclass car-following rule based on the LWR model. In Traffic and Granular Flow '07 Part I, pages 151-160. Springer, 2009.
  5. J A Laval. Linking synchronized flow and kinematic wave theory. In T. Schadschneider, A.and Poschel, R. Kuhne, M. Schreckenberg, and D. Wolf, editors, Traffic and Granular Flow '05, pages 521-526. Springer, 2005.
  6. J A Laval, M J Cassidy, and C F Daganzo. Impacts of lane changes at on-ramp bottlenecks: A theory and strategies to maximize capacity. In T. Schadschneider, A.and Poschel, R. Kuhne, M. Schreckenberg, and D. Wolf, editors, Traffic and Granular Flow '05, pages 577-586. Springer, 2005.
  7. J A Laval. Some properties of a multi-lane extension of the kinematic wave model. TRB 2003 Annual Meeting CD-ROM. Also ITS Tech. Report UCB-ITS-WP-2003-1, 2003.
  8. J A Laval. A proposal on flow-delay curves. In IX Latin Am. Tr. Eng. Cong. Santiago, Chile, 1999.

Presentations

  1. A theory on the formation of oscillations in congested traffic. Dynamics Days Europe conference, Bristol, UK, Sep. 2010.
  2. Recent Advances in Traffic Flow Theory. IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems and Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, Dec. 2009.
  3. A theory on the formation and propagation of stop-and-go waves in congested freeway traffic. Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Berkeley, Sept. 2009.
  4. The hysteresis in traffic flow revisited: new evidence and impact of measurement methods. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, April 2009.
  5. Variational methods in traffic flow. Tokyo University, December 2007.
  6. Macroscopic fundamental diagrams for cities. Tokyo University, December 2007.
  7. A microscopic lane-changing model based on a macroscopic model. Kyoto University, December 2007.
  8. Exact user equilibrium solution in simple networks. Kobe University, December 2007.
  9. Lagrangian resolution of the multilane hybrid traffic flow model. Mathematical models of traffic flow. CIRM, Marseille, France. November 2007.
  10. Delays Caused by Trucks on Multilane Freeways: Impacts of Overtaking Bans for Trucks. Presented at the 86th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C. 2007.
  11. Impacts Of Lane Changes At On-Ramp Bottlenecks. Presented at INFORMS national meeting, Pittsburgh, PA. 2006.
  12. Impacts of roadway geometry on capacity. Presented at the 82nd annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C. 2003.
  13. A hybrid model of traffic flow. Presented at INFORMS national meeting, Atlanta, GA. 2003.