Speakers at Modelling World 2017

Tom van Vuren 

Divisional Director
Mott MacDonald

Tom van Vuren has been Chairman of Modelling World since its inception in 2006. As his Twitter profile states, he is passionate about transport modelling and always on the look-out for better ways to collect data, enhance the efficiency of methods and improve accessibilty of model results. He holds an MSc from the University of Delft and a PhD from the Institute for Transport Studies and the University of Leeds. Tom is a Divisional Director at Mott MacDonald and a visiting Professor at the University of Leeds; and is a qualified Transport Planning Professional. 

Dr Greg Marsden

DEMAND Centre
University of Leeds

Greg is Professor of Transport Governance at the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. He has researched issues surrounding the design and implementation of new policies for over 15 years covering a range of issues. Current work examines how the smart mobility transition will change how we think about what, how and who governs the mobility system. He is the Secretary General of the World Conference on Transport Research Society and the Chair of the Special Interest Group on Governance. He has served as an advisor to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee and regularly advises national and international governments.

Paul Buchanan

Partner, Volterra

Paul is an economist specialising in the planning, economic and financial appraisal of public and private sector transport investments and policies. Paul has particular expertise in the appraisal of urban rail systems in UK and overseas. In London his background includes the JLE, Crossrail, Underground extensions and a number of light rail schemes.

Paul led the development of the approach to valuing Wider Economic Benefits for Crossrail from 2002 to 2005, subsequently incorporated into Department for Transport guidance in 2006. WEBs show the real economic benefits associated with urban rail projects, not time savings but enabling city centre growth.

Paul spent 12 years at Colin Buchanan and Partners, 11 as Board Director, then Managing Director. The CBP focus on interactions between the economy, transport and planning, remain his core area of interest.

Paul is now a Partner at Volterra. His work includes HS2, rail schemes in Dublin, Auckland and Toronto, WEBs in Sydney and NZ and the economic impacts from the implementation of Crossrail.

Helen Bowkett

Consultant
Arcadis

Helen Bowkett has spent most of her working life in consultancy as transport economist and modeller, She has worked on a wide range of major infrastructure projects including bus rapid transit, roads, new cycle bridges and new railway stations. She was until recently the Head of Evidence at the Welsh Government, overseeing their analytical work on major projects and writing WelTAG 2017. Throughout her career she has maintained active links with the academic world and survived the part time PhD experience.

Anan Allos

Director
Atkins

Anan is a director and has been with Atkins 9 years. He is a transport planner with over 45 years experience specialising in the development of major multi-mode transportation models and the economic and financial evaluation of public and private transport schemes. He has been recently been involved in the use of big data such as GPS and mobile phones in model development and has always explored innovative methods for modelling.

Patrizia Franco

Technologist
Transport Systems Catapult

Dr Patrizia Franco, technologist at Transport Systems Catapult and former researcher in transport modelling and data analysis at Newcastle University, has extensive experience in public transport modelling and adaptation of mobility services to achieve greater sustainability and resilience of transport networks. She has strong experience in the integration of land use, transport and agent based modelling (ABM), gained during the 5 year EPSRC funded Self-Conserving Urban Environments (SECURE) project and in modelling mobility services. She is currently leading the technical delivery of the Innovate UK funded project Mobility on demand laboratory (MODLE).

Luis Willumsen 

Director
Willumsen Advisory Services & Kineo Mobillity Anaylytics 

Director of many transport planning and modelling projects throughout the world including UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, UAE, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and South Africa. 

Director of numerous traffic and revenue projection studies for toll road, metro and rail concessions in over 25 countries. 

Director of the Operational Design of Transmilenio in 1999.

Co-author of "Modelling Transport" published by John Wiley & Sons whose fourth edition is now available. Author of "Better Traffic and Revenue Forecasting" published by Maida Vale Press in 2014. More than 50 technical papers and presentations to conferences.

James Snowdon 

Senior Consultant
Systra

Coming from a background in software development, James Snowdon completed a PhD in agent based modelling of driver route choice with the University of Southampton. Since joining SYSTRA he has worked on a variety of multi modal modelling and appraisal applications, particularly covering London and the South of England, and has developed an interest in the use of new technology and sources of data to enhance transport modelling. He has recently worked on a number of projects furthering capabilities in modelling active travel, particularly in supporting TfL on the development of their new Cynemon strategic cycling model. This included aspects of generating future year cycling demand and capturing mode shift towards cycling in response to cycle schemes.

David Connolly

Director of Innovation 
Systra

Dr David Connolly is Director of Innovation at SYSTRA Ltd and an expert in transport-related emissions strategy and appraisal.  His experience includes the creation and use of numerous multi-modal transport models, the modelling and appraisal of the emissions-related impacts of a wide range of land-use plans, transport schemes and strategies and a variety of other transport-related behavioural research.  He is a Director of the Transport Planning Society and a member of Environmental Protection Scotland’s Air Quality Expert Advisory Group and represents the Scottish Government’s Transport and Travel Statistics Committee on the ScotStat Board.  He is currently involved in helping to develop Clean Air Strategies for three UK cities and in the optimisation of the provision of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales).

Aruna Sivakumar 

Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College

Aruna Sivakumar is a senior lecturer in travel behaviour and demand modelling at the Centre for Transport Studies, Imperial College London. Aruna is a member of several scientific committees such as the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Travel Behaviour and Values, and is on the editorial board of Transportation Letters. Her research interests include econometric models of demand, travel behaviour and the role of ICTs, integrated urban system models, and transport policy.

Howard Wong

Transport Planner 
Transport for London 

Howard has been a transport planner in TfL for 11 years. His initial focus was on station capacity modelling, upgrade planning and step-free access. Currently Howard is focusing on delivering a new comprehensive demand data set that is comprised of London Underground, London Overground, DLR, Trams and the Elizabeth line. He is also involved in strategic planning and leads orbital rail travel for the upcoming Mayor’s Transport Strategy.

Jordi Casas

Executive Director, Research & Development Director
Transport Simulation Systems 

Jordi Casas is a founding partner of TSS-Transport Simulation Systems and Executive Director of Research and Development. He holds an additional position as Professor in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of Vic, and is a renowned expert in the field of traffic modelling with experience in numerous Spanish, European and US Federal projects.

Since 1993 Jordi has been instrumental in the development of the Aimsun microscopic simulator and he continues to work on enhancements to hybrid micro-mesoscopic simulation, dynamic traffic assignment models and travel demand modelling. He holds a PhD in “Estimating Transport Demand in Real-Time Applications” and he has developed several algorithmic improvements in the context of decision support for real-time traffic management.

His current research continues to develop traffic modelling and simulation techniques with an emphasis on Aimsun as an accurate and cost-effective simulation environment for testing new, disruptive technologies, such as connected and autonomous vehicles, in regression and pre-deployment scenarios.

Alison Cox 

Transport Planning Group 
Highways England

Alison  is a transport planner and modeller in the newly named Transport Planning Group (formerly known as TAME) at Highways England.  Only joining Highways England in 2015, Alison was quickly tasked with leading the development of the five Regional Traffic Models (RTMs) which cover the Strategic Road Network in England.  Now that the models are built she has now moved on to use them  to assist in the selection and development of schemes for the next Road Investment Period post 2020.  She also acts as Business Partner to a number of major schemes currently going through the development process at Highways England offering transport planning and modelling advice to the project teams. Alison previously worked in consultancy with AECOM.

Keith Buchan 

Director for Skills 
Transport Planning Systems 

The Transport Planning Society (TPS) is the professional body for transport planners, helping to develop and promote best practice in transport planning and provide a focus for dialogue between all those engaged in it, whatever their background or other professional affiliation.

Keith Buchan is currently TPS Director for Skills leading a team of four which runs the industry standard TPS Professional Development Scheme (PDS), and supports (with CIHT) the Transport Planning Professional (TPP) qualification.  He has over 30 years experience in transport planning generally and in modelling, forecasting and appraisal in particular.  He is leading the TPS modelling initiative.

James Gleave 

Transport Strategy, Innovation, Foresight, and Application
Founder, Transport Futures 

James is an experienced transport strategist, focussing on the transport and how it influences society. James applies his knowledge in technology, future trends, and public and sustainable transport to identify opportunity areas to deliver new technologies to benefit the transport sector.

James has worked on a range of projects in his 12 years of working in transport. These include developing local authority transport strategies, horizon-scanning projects for Government, mapping investment landscapes for intelligent transport technologies, and delivering sustainable transport behaviour change programmes.

He is also Director of Consultancy Services at TravelSpirit.

John Allan 

Modelling and Appraisal Director
SYSTRA

John Allan is SYSTRA’s Director for Modelling and Appraisal.  He started work in transport planning in 1988 for the Greater Manchester Transportation Unit, which is now part of Transport for Greater Manchester.  In 1998 he moved to MVA, who changed name to SYSTRA in 2014.  His specialisms are multi-modal network models and uni-modal demand and revenue forecasting models.  He has built and used multi-modal models of many of our major cities including Birmingham, Derby, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Leicester, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield.

Bianca de Farias Letti

Economist Adviser 
National Infrastructure Comission 

Bianca is the lead on infrastructure systems modelling for the transport, energy, solid waste and water sectors in the National Infrastructure Commission. She is currently working on modelling infrastructure outcomes across a range of scenarios for the UK’s first National Infrastructure Assessment. She previously worked on pensions analysis and modelling and holds an MSc in Economics from the University of Warwick.

Sam Brooks

Software Engineer 
Atkins

Sam is a software engineer who has been in Atkins for four years, starting as a physicist in Nuclear New Build and moving to ADS&T in January 2015. He then worked on various websites and software projects, mostly focusing on geospatial/mapping websites and the Dynamic Objects project. He has experience with both front-end and back-end development. He has always been interested in developing his coding knowledge and skills further, and his own personal projects tend to focus on machine learning and Artificial Intelligence

Nila Sari 

Principal Transport Modeller 
Transport for London

Nila Sari is a Principal Transport Modeller, working in Transport for London City Planning’s Strategic Analysis team. She has an MSc in Transport Planning from Leeds University. She has extensive experience in various transportation modelling and analysis projects, including the development of the sub-regional highway assignment models and the early modelling and analysis of the London congestion charging scheme. She was TfL’s Project Manager for the development of the Cycling Network Model for London (Cynemon).

Zac Zachariah 

CEO
Travel AI 

Passionate about building businesses that use technology to solve real world problems of scale that impact humanity and quality of life.

TravelAi is the 3rd concern Zac has founded or co-founded.

During his finance days his role in principal investments in HighYield businesses such as Level 3, JazzTel, Tyco Cable, Viatel, Flextronics, Orange and Tiscali proved unique. The '99/'00 3G auction bonanza in Telecom sector with its flawed business models, dot-com bubble, Asian crisis, LTCM blow up all gave him many opportunities to witness the (always) short memory of the financial markets. Years later this early mobile industry exposure and knowledge of technical trading would provide the foundation for CarbonDiem and then TravelAI.

Experienced dealing with everyone from Central Bankers, Finance Ministers, a PM to S&P500 C-Execs, creatives, engineers, the yoof, charities & academics.
 

Eduardo Lazzarotto

Sales Director
Legion 

Eduardo Lazzarotto has been leading the Business Development team of Legion since 2015 and before that has worked for multiple years with logistics, finance, business development and sales, always related to transport. These roles passed through negotiating re-signalling projects with London Underground and managing logistics and international business with Latin America’s largest rail freight operator. He holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and works consistently with improving the movement of goods and people. 

Laurence Oakes-Ash

CEO
City Science

Laurence has spent his career bringing together large, real-time datasets and turning them into actionable strategies. This has been in the areas of business management, automated systems, risk and now energy and transport. In his former life, he managed high-value share trading platforms across Europe and witnessed the radical digitization and automation of the finance industry. He is now applying his knowledge and experience to data-driven decision making in cities.”

Peter Lindgren 

COO
Travel AI

Peter is responsible for strategy and commercialisation at Carbon Hero, which has with specialisms in the sustainability, mobile and software-development spheres. Clients have included the European Space Agency and the UK government.

Prior to Carbon Hero, Peter held various team-leadership and product-management positions at financial analysis and news firms, ranging from small start-ups through privately-held multi nationals to a FTSE 250 company.

Daren Rapley

Business Development Manager
ITO World 

A Sales and Business Manager having spent the last 10 years providing Communication and Incident Management Services. Working extensively with international corporate organisations, local government and national government departments, I have been fortunate enough to accumulate a diverse range of experience. Helping develop technology and see it really work for my clients, particularly in challenging situations, is hugely rewarding. 

Devrim Kara

Director
PTV UK

Devrim Kara is an experienced transport professional who has led the planning and design of major transport projects around the world. He delivered projects focusing on urban areas as well as regional and national transport networks. As the PTV Group Director for UK & Ireland, Devrim works closely with clients and professionals that use PTV Group software in developing effective, safe and balanced transport solutions globally. The PTV Group software is state-of-the-art and is used by professionals in more than 100 countries on innovative, intelligent and sustainable solutions that shape the future of transportation. 

Phil Richards

Modelling Director
Atkins

Phil Richards is the Director for Transport Modelling at Atkins. He is a specialist in strategic modelling techniques, travel demand forecasting and scheme evaluation and is currently the Project Director for the Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) commission for Highways England, focusing on evaluating whether the predicted modelled benefits from major schemes have been realised. He is currently part-seconded to Highways England driving the delivery of the modelling/appraisal of the smart motorway programme, which are now mostly based on enhancing the relevant regional models.

Mark Ledbury 

Deputy Director
Department for Transport 

Mark Ledbury is Head of Transport Appraisal and Strategic Modelling (TASM) at DfT and is responsible for overseeing the development of the Department’s modelling and appraisal tools including WebTAG and the National Transport Model. Mark is a senior government economist with experience working in a number of public sector bodies including the Cabinet Office, Strategic Rail Authority and Home Office. Mark’s previous roles in transport have included Local Major Schemes and the development of the Economic Case for HS2.   

Piotr Wiech

Planner Transport Modelling 
Transport for London 

Piotr graduated from the Warsaw University of Technology and is a transport planner and modeller with more than 15 years of professional experience. His career in transport planning in the UK spans over 11 years of working for consultancies, such as Scott Willson/URS and Systra and more recently directly for TfL. Over this period of time Piotr has gained an in-depth knowledge of Railplan, the TfL’s strategic public transport model. Since coming to TfL in 2015 he has been involved in the London Underground’s simulation modelling using the Train Service Model and in exploring new ways of reporting demand on London Underground.

Alby Miller 

Senior Technologist
Transport Systems Catapult 

Coming from a background in Aeronautical Engineering, Alby has been developing software for over 15 years and is a Senior Technologist at the Transport Systems Catapult where he now focuses on visualization-based software systems built around 3D environments and immersive technologies. Alby has led projects as diverse as BIM model management and federation, the development of ERP and GIS platforms, mobile games and the creation of city-scale VR environments. 

Michael Oliver 

Solution Director 
PTV Visum

Solution Director for PTV Visum, responsible for global business development of the world's leading transport planning solution through market exploration; supporting innovative applications; strategic customer engagement; thought-leadership and ensuring that PTV Visum will continue to support decision makers in planning for the mobility of tomorrow.

Alastair Evanson

Solution Director
PTV Vissim

Alastair Evanson is PTV Group’s Solution Director for PTV Vissim & Vistro products, working with users and industry leaders from across the globe to further develop the use and success of the software through ensuring the ongoing development of innovative features which help to answer emerging topics, technologies and market requirements.

Alastair is an experienced Traffic Engineer and Transport Planner having worked internationally for a number of years completing a wide range of micro-simulation modelling, highway, integrated transport and development planning projects. 

Martin Pett

Principal Technologist
Transport Systems Catapult 

Martin is a Chartered Human Factors consultant with a background in Industrial Design.  He has worked for 12 years in the field of applied Human Factors Engineering applying Human Factors to complex engineering and systems integration projects in the Transport, Military and Automotive Industries (JLR).  Martin’s speciality is in the application of Human Factors principles to complex design, safety and usability focused projects

Martin leads the Visualisation team within the Modelling and Visualisation Business Unit.  He is building a world leading team/capability to develop a range of tools to Visualise and interact with large volumes of data/transport simulations.  The Visualisation team’s primary objective is to design and build tools that are more usable and inclusive to helping to engage with a greater cross section of end users.  Through the use of Visualisation technologies, we want to empower decision makers to make better informed decisions.

Abraham Narh

Senior Technologist
Transport Systems Catapult

Dr Abraham Narh is a Senior Technologist at the Transport Systems Catapult (TSC).  An early career Civil Engineer, Abraham has a broad range of experience in transport planning and modelling, traffic engineering, traffic and transport assessments, and research.  He has about 15 years’ combined experience in the industry and has worked in consultancy both the UK and abroad.  Abraham joined TSC in 2016 on completion of a PhD research focused on techniques for the proactive management of the urban road network.  Abraham has researched on deploying Chaos Theory and machine learning techniques to support the proactive management of the urban and motorway network.  Abraham’s current role at the TSC is to support innovative research in the use of mathematical algorithms to enhance the operational capability of new and existing systems/modelling tools to understand network-wide traffic impacts and its consequences.  Recently, Abraham has worked on some cutting-edge research and innovation driven projects for the TSC.  Notably, this includes applying Neural Network to the short-term traffic prediction on the motorway network; and the large-scale simulation of the entire Highways England’s Strategic Road Network.  

Dr. Siamak Khorgami MCIHT

Associate Director
AECOM

Dr. Siamak Khorgami is a transport planner with over twelve years’ experience, providing transport planning advice to both public and private sector clients. Whilst the majority of Siamak’s career has been spent in consultancy, Siamak completed his part-time PhD in UCL developing an innovative and practical approach in modelling of household activities and travel behaviour. In the last three years, Siamak acted as a professional tutor and hosted UCL’s undergraduate BEng and MEng Civil Engineering students to present “What it is like to work for an Engineering Consultancy Firm”, in particular in relation to transport planning, transport modelling, and traffic engineering. Moreover, Siamak recently developed an action plan for potential areas of collaboration and partnership between the transport planning team in the South East and a university in London.

Dan Saunders 

Product Manager
Basemap

Dan has been designing and delivering transport based software solutions for nearly 10 years, supplying both software and data to various NHS, local authorities and central government departments. Basemap’s flagship product TRACC is used by many authorities to provide on-going monitoring of their transportation networks.  Dan, also has experience with detailed transportation datasets, having worked in the team that delivered Travelines National Dataset (TNDS) which is now used to power many web, mobile and desktop applications.

Sam Gunner

PHD Student
University of Bristol  

After completing a Masters in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at The University of Nottingham Sam spent a number of years working as a Research and Development Engineer with Transport for London. Here he was involved in large scale technology deployment, working on projects to enhance the city’s traffic light control and CCTV systems. Sam started his PhD at the University of Bristol in 2015, where he spans the High Performance Networking and Engineering Mathematics departments. His projects combine cutting edge technology with advanced data processing, delivering research in a range fields, from urban mobility to real time structural health monitoring.

Anna Pages Maso 

Senior Technologist
Transport Systems Catapult  

Anna is a Systems Engineer with background in Electronics and Communications. She worked for 11 years designing embedded systems in the Automotive, Aerospace and Wind Energy industries, before joining the Transport Systems Catapult in 2015.

Anna enjoys working on demonstration projects for R&D, proving ideas and new designs and bringing together the collaborators that will allow these concepts to come into fruition, both in terms of functionality and commercialisation.

Chris Bruce

Associate Director, Transport Planning
Arup

Chris is a transport planner and modeller at Arup with over 15 years’ experience advising clients in the UK and overseas.  This has included the development of a range of transport models ranging from single tab spreadsheets to complex solutions using a range of specialist software.  He has significant experience in developing large scale models having recently led the development of one of Highways England’s Regional Traffic Models as well as developing sub regional models for TfL.  He is passionate about data and using new sources more effectively in transport planning to reveal behaviour and generate better insights to inform decision making.

Chris White 

Project Director
Mott MacDonald 

Over 35 years’ experience in transport planning, transport modelling, appraisal, research and software development.  Has led transport modelling and appraisal on major transport projects. Undertaken regional traffic model development.  Led research and development for modelling and appraisal tools TUBA and DIADEM. Has developed and coordinated transport modelling best practice throughout Mott MacDonald. Experienced as an expert witness at public inquiries and DCO examinations on major transport schemes.

Carl Goves 

Applications Lead 
Immense Simulations 

Carl is an experienced transport modeller having previously worked extensively on major infrastructure business cases and major events. He has a passion for innovation and in his role with Immense works with clients to understand how their needs can be met by the exciting products we are developing. Carl also leads Immense’s research project  developing Tools for Autonomous Logistics Operations and maNagement (TALON).

Jonathan Coello

Software Engineer
Improbable

Building detailed transport models quickly at scale is now possible. Improbable’s technology, SpatialOS, is a distributed operating system enabling you to create huge simulations inhabited by millions of complex entities. These can be rich game worlds or large-scale models of complex systems such as ecosystems, economies, or the infrastructure of cities. The worlds can span massive regions of space, contain millions of individually simulated, persistent entities with complex behaviour, and run across thousands of servers in the cloud. Collaboration between Improbable and the Transport Systems Catapult demonstrated that it is possible to use this technology to achieve meaningful models. Jon will provide an overview of their technology and how transport professionals can use it to build large-scale simulations of cities.

Professor Eddie Wilson 

Chair in Intelligent Transport Systems
University of Bristol 

Eddie Wilson is an applied mathematician and mathematical modeller. Presently, he is Professor of Intelligent Transport Systems at the University of Bristol. He was an EPSRC advanced research fellow in highway traffic modelling 2007-2012 leading to well-known work on traffic stability and stop-and-go waves. These days his interests span a wide range of topics in traffic modelling and data analyses, and involve many corporate and government stakeholders. He sat on the DfT science advisory council 2015-16. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.