On the afternoon of September 4, 2023, Peng Zhongren, a tenured professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida, was invited to give an academic report entitled The Pathway of Transportation Al to our school. Chen Jun, the dean of the School of Transportation, attended and delivered a speech, and Yang Min, the vice dean, presided over the report.
Starting from the definition of artificial intelligence (AI), Professor Peng Zhongren divided the process of combining AI with urban transportation planning into four stages: AI-assisted planning, AI-enhanced planning, AI-automated planning, and finally, AI-autonomous planning. Combining his team's research achievements, Professor Peng provided guidance and inspiration for the faculty and students on the issue of AI-enabled transportation planning.
Professor Peng Zhongren presented numerous examples of AI applications in transportation planning during the AI-assisted planning stage, including the Global City Climate Sustainability Planning and the Florida City Planning Research Report. He demonstrated that AI has advantages such as resistance to forgetting and high efficiency. In the AI-enhanced planning stage, he analyzed the significant losses caused by hurricanes in Florida and provided policy recommendations for the government's transportation infrastructure construction and resilience planning based on the development of Transportation GPT professional AI software. Using the example of micro-transit planning in Tampa City, he showed how AI can be used to automatically learn and design plans in the AI-automated planning stage, achieving more simulation scenarios than traditional traffic engineering plans. Finally, he proposed the concept of Strong AI in the AI-autonomous planning stage, which means that AI can replace transportation engineers to independently design plans, representing the ultimate goal and direction of AI-enabled transportation planning.
Professor Peng also discussed talent training and curriculum design with the faculty of the School of Transportation, sharing experiences from the University of Florida in establishing AI-related disciplines and offering AI courses. He encouraged students to embrace new technologies and learn new methods, adopting an open and optimistic attitude towards the transformation and development of their field.
Professor Peng's lecture was insightful and well-received by the audience. He provided a clear framework and development steps for AI-enabled transportation planning, offering direction and guidance for future research in the field. His rigorous academic attitude and profound academic accomplishment were fully demonstrated in the lecture, which left a deep impression on the audience.
Peng Zhongren is a tenured professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida, director of the International Center for Adaptation Planning and Design (iAdapt), a top 1% scientist in the field of planning according to Google Scholar, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's GeoTech Center, and a member of the Transportation Geography Information Science Committee and the Public Transportation Planning and Management Committee of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. He is also a senior advisor to the US National Science Foundation and an editorial board member of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation. His main research areas are transportation planning and management, climate change adaptation planning, urban planning, and artificial intelligence. He has published 179 papers, including 56 highly cited papers, and authored two books.