Lab for Innovative Infrastructure Systems

The following students graduated from our laboratory this spring.

• Ge Qian (Ph.D.)
• Gao-Qi Wang (M.S.)
• Masanori Mizuguchi (M.S.)
• Shin Suzuki (B.S.)

Morever, Mr. Yamaguchi, a researcher, will move to Kanazawa University as a specially-appointed assistant professor from this April.

We wish you all the best in the new position.

In connection with the project of data-driven transportation research, we held a joint workshop with Arimura-Asada Laboratory of Muroran Institute of Technology and Kamiya Laboratory of University of the Ryukyus (see photo here). Prof. Fukuda, Mr. Nakanishi, Ms. Kaneko, Mr. Imaoka, and Mr. Suzuki participated from Fukuda Lab. The presentation program is as follows.

1. Development of a downscaling method for estimating the population entering a city by time of day using RBF network (Takumi Ikoshi, M1 student at the Department of Environmental Engineering and Design, Graduate School of Engineering, Muroran Institute of Technology)
2. Evaluation of travel time reliability using commercial vehicle probe data: A case study of the Sapporo city center access road (Tatsuya Kaneko, M1 student at the Graduate School of Engineering, Muroran Institute of Technology)
3. Fundamental Study on Survey Methods for Tourist Behavior (Kendai Tanaka, B4 student at the Department of Environmental and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of the Ryukyus)
4. A study on understanding intercity passenger flow by fusion of multiple data (Arata Suzuki, B4 student at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology)
5. The applicability of the Recursive Logit model (Noriko Kaneko, M1 student at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Environmental and Social Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology)

We would like to thank Prof. Arimura and Prof. Asada for organizing this seminar. Thank you very much.

In Krabi Province, Thailand, we conducted a travel behavior study using Wi-Fi packet sensors (Fukuda, Kobayashi, Tsuru, and Shinohara) to estimate the dynamic OD of transit base users by installing Wi-Fi sensors on paratransit vehicles and moving them together. We would like to thank Prof. Kasem Choocharukul of Chulalongkorn University, members of the Kasem Laboratory, and Mr. Suga of the Institute for Regional Innovation, who collaborated on the research. Thank you very much.

[2016/10/23]

• A baseball tournament among 10 university planning laboratories was held at the Noda Campus of Tokyo University of Science. The Tokyo Tech team participated in the tournament and won the second place. We would like to thank all the participants for their hard work.

[2016/09/24～09/25]

• Mr. Wang, Mr. Tsuru, Mr. Shinohara, Ms. Kaneko, Mr. Imaoka and Mr. Suzuki participated in the Behavioral Modeling Summer School (@Univ. of Tokyo). We constructed a choice model between bicycle parking lot use and illegal bicycle parking, carefully discriminated legal and illegal bicycle parking based on PP latitude and longitude information, and created variables using GIS, regular/irregular, and other information to estimate the parameters of the model. The team was ranked third overall (out of 19 teams) in the competition. We would like to thank the members of the Hato Laboratory of the University of Tokyo who served as the organizers of the competition.

[2016/09/03～09/06]

• The annual TSU joint summer seminar was held in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture. It was a fulfilling seminar camp with research presentations and discussions by master’s and doctoral students and professors, as well as laboratory seminars and social gatherings inside and outside the laboratories.

[2016/07/22]

• The master’s thesis presentation was held. Mr. Dantsuji gave a presentation from our laboratory. Thank you for your hard work!

[2016/07/18]

• As a research meeting, Dr. Xun Murakami, Associate Professor of City University of Hong Kong, gave a lecture titled “Public Land around Transportation for Sustainable Finance and Urbanism: Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mainland China”. Thank you very much for your valuable lecture. 

[2016/05/28 ~ 05/29]

• We participated in the JSCE Conference and made the following presentations. Thanks everyone for making some comments during the presentations.
  
  1. Analysis of Simultaneous Decision-Making Behavior of Location and Quantity of Location of Logistics Facilities Using Spatial Sample-Selection Model (Shinohara, Fukuda, Hyodo)
  2. Proposal of Fundamental Diagram for Efficiency Analysis of High-Frequency Rail System (Seo, Wada, Fukuda)
  3. Development of Micro-Econometric Analysis Focusing on Social Interaction and its Potential Application to Civil Engineering Planning (Rikiishi, Seya, Fukuda)
  4. Development of Micro-Econometric Analysis Focusing on Social Interaction and its Potential Application to Civil Engineering Planning (Rikiishi, Seya, Fukuda)
  5. A General Frame for Traffic Condition Estimation by Utilizing Various Observation Data (Fuse, Sasaki, Fukuda, Kikuchi, Fujii, Ryo, and Fukuyama)
     A Study on Activity-based Traffic Behavior Model for Railway Users (Kameya, Fukuda)
  6. Disaggregate modeling of vehicle-miles travelled: International Comparison with the consideration of rounding effect (Dantsuji)

[2015/12/12 ~ 12/14]

• We participated in Hong Kong Society fot Transportation Studies and presented three papers.

• (1) Junpei Kameya：Comparison of Analytical Approximation Methods for Multinomial Probit Model: A Case Study with Passenger’s Rail-Route Choice Analysis in The Tokyo Metropolitan Area

• (2) Keiwa Kikuchi：Rail Passenger’s Departure Time Choice Model in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area Considering the Effects of In-Vehicle Congestion

• (3) Masanori Mizuguchi：Long-Term Time-Series Modeling of Traffic Demand for Urban/Interban Expressways in Japan

[2015/09/25 ~ 09/27]

• This year we attended the 14th annual “Behavioral Modeling Summer School 2015” (http://bin.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/model14/). This “Summer School” is a study session where participants analyze given data to create behavioral models and compete for the importance and novelty of their models. Two teams from Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Asakura Lab and the Fukuda Lab, participated in this event.

[2015/07/30]

• The first semester seminar has ended, and we went to the beer garden of Tokyo Tower with our lab members! Let’s keep up the good work in the second semester!

[2015/05/29]

• We participated in the Ookayama Kuramae Seminar, an event sponsored by the Kuramae Industrial Association. Dr. Hitoshi Honda of Mitsubishi Research Institute, who is also a senior student of civil engineering, gave a valuable lecture on “Thinking about the path to sustainable growth,” mainly on regional development. Thank you very much.

[2015/05/26]

• Mr. Ge, a second-year doctoral student, has successfully completed his midterm presentation. The title of his presentation is “Travel demand estimation with aggregated mobile phone data”.

[2015/05/25]

• We attended the TSU Suzukakedai Seminar. Prof. Kii of Kagawa University talked about urban expansion and energy consumption in the world, as well as the outlook for the future. Thank you very much for your valuable lecture.

[2015/05/01]

• Ms. Wang, who is currently studying at the Technical University of Denmark, sent us a report on her recent activities.

[2015/04/28]

• We contributed an article introducing our laboratory to the commemorative magazine of the alumni association of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

[2015/04/16]

We received a recent report from Mr. Dantsuji, who is currently studying at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).

First of all, when I talked with Europeans. I thought that most of the images of Japan in foreign countries are “sushi,” “working hard,” and “manga. As for sushi, there are a few sushi restaurants in Lausanne, but they don’t seem to be very good. There are not many fish sections in the supermarkets, so I think the fish is probably not very fresh. If I get a chance, I will give it a try. I didn’t know about it and couldn’t go this year, but there seems to be a Japanese culture festival called “Japan Impact” held every year at EPFL. I would like to go next year, but depending on the time of year, I may already be back home.

The building in the photo below is the university library, which was designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, two Japanese architects. It is a beautiful design, although the building is sometimes difficult to use due to its sloping interior.

Lastly, on a serious note, we were talking about the recent German plane crash and how there has been a lot of bad news lately! I was talking about something like that. I told him that tomorrow would be 4 years since the 3.11 earthquake, but he seemed to have no idea what I was talking about and said, “Oh, I don’t know if there was an earthquake like that. I was surprised at their reaction, but I wondered if the Sumatra earthquake, for example, was recognized in that way by the Japanese, and I was strangely convinced and also somewhat saddened by it. There must be much more of “Japan” that we have yet to discover. I hope to use this opportunity to discover the “Japan” in Europe and its differences from Japan.

[Takao Dantuji]

[2015/04/08]

• Today, Mr. Shinohara and Mr. Tsuru have been assigned to the Fukuda Lab.

[2015/03]

• This spring, one researcher and three master’s students graduated from the Fukuda Lab. Thank you for your hard work.

[2015/03/26 ~ 03/27]

• On 26th March, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering held a thank-you party, while on March 27, our laboratory held a farewell party. This year, three of our senior students graduated from the master’s course. We are sad to say goodbye to them, but we wish them all the best in their careers!

[2015/02]

• Mr. Ito, Mr. Bando, and Mr. Shinkai (M2) successfully presented their master thesis.
• Mr. Mizuguchi’s B4 graduation thesis presentation was also successfully completed.
• Thank you all for your hard work.

[2014/11]

• Dr. Hideki Yanaginuma (Assistant Professor, The University of Tokyo), a graduate of the University of Tokyo, received the Yoneya-Sasagi Award (Thesis Division). This award is given to young researchers and engineers under 50 years old who are engaged in research or work related to transportation engineering and planning in Japan, and who have already published highly evaluated research results, as well as to outstanding dissertations obtained between September 2011 and August 2014. The award-winning thesis is Dr. Yanaginuma’s doctoral thesis, “DEVELOPMENT OF A MODEL FOR FREQUENCY-BASED TRANSIT ROUTE ASSIGNMENT AND A MODEL OF PEDESTRIAN WALKING BEHAVIOR INSIDE STATIONS FOR MITIGATION OF URBAN RAIL CONGESTION”. Congratulations!

[2014/09/27 ~ 09/28]

• This year we attended the 13th annual “Behavioral Modeling Summer School 2014” (http://bin.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/model14/)”. This “Summer School” is a study session where students analyze given data to create behavioral models and compete for the importance and novelty of their models. Tokyo Institute of Technology was represented by a joint team of the Asakura and Fukuda Labs, and five students from the Fukuda Lab participated.

[2014/09/24]

• There was an inter-laboratory volleyball tournament for civil engineering labs, and two teams from the planning lab participated. It was raining heavily from time to time, but we were happy that we could make it to the end without any problems. We would like to thank all the participants for their hard work.

[2014/09/21 ~ 09/23]

• We went to Toyama and Kanazawa for a seminar trip of our laboratory. There, we had the opportunity to inspect the LRT and rental bicycles, as well as visit the construction site of the Shinkansen bullet train line.

[2014/04]

• Ms. Wang and Mr. Dantuji joined as new M1 members, and Mr. Mizuguchi joined as new B4 member. Let’s work hard for a year under the new structure.
• We have updated the list of thesis list to the latest version.

[2014/03]

• Mr. Fujita, Mr. Endo, and Ms. Xie completed their master’s programs, while Mr. Kameya and Mr. Kikuchi graduated from the undergraduate course. Congratulations to them!

[2014/02/18]

• Graduation thesis presentation was held. Mr. Kameya and Mr. Kikuchi gave presentations from our laboratory. Today marks the end of all completion of the related activities for the 2013 academic year. Thank you all for your hard work!

[2014/02/12]

• Master’s thesis presentation was held. From our laboratory, Mr. Fujita, Mr. Endo, and Ms. Xie made presentations.

[2014/01/31]

• Graduation theses were submitted. Thank you for your hard work, Mr. Kikuchi and Mr.Kameya. Let’s all work hard together toward the presentation!

[2014/01/24]

• At 5:00 today, master’s thesis was submitted! Then, we took a group photo at the laboratory. Thank you all for your hard work over the long period of time. Let’s work hard for the presentation!

[2013/12/28]

• We had a lab cleaning and year-end party at the Fukuda Laboratory. We cleaned up all the grime that had accumulated over the past year. Have a happy New Year!

[2013/12/26]

• There was a midterm presentation and a year-end party. Fujita, Xie, Endo, and Kameya presented from Fukuda Lab. Thank you for your hard work! The year-end party was a fitting end to the year. We are almost ready to submit our papers! Let’s all do our best!

[2013/12/16]

• We participated in a campus-wide cleanup! Everyone picked up a lot of fallen leaves on campus. This kind of cleanup makes me feel that another year is coming to an end.

[2013/11/13]

• We attended the Suzukakedai Seminar at TSU. Prpf. Sasaki of the University of Yamanashi and Prof. Hato of the University of Tokyo gave their lectures. I was able to listen to their valuable talks about their research history and their lives as researchers. We also enjoyed hearing various stories at the reception that followed.

[2013/11/02 ~ 11/04]

• We participated in the 48th JSCE Fall Conference. The location was Osaka City University. From our laboratory, Prof. Fukuda, Mr. Fukuda (M2) and Mr. Ito (M1) presented their research respectively. There were many interesting presentations and they learned a lot.

[2013/10/31]

• We participated in the Tokyo Tech-KU Joint Seminar on Infrastructure Development, a joint seminar of Tokyo Tech and Kasetsart University in Thailand. Mr. Bando (M1) presented his research from our laboratory.

[2013/10/29]

• Prof. Fukuda had just returned from a business trip, so we went for a drink at the laboratory. It was also his birthday coming up, so we celebrated together. Congratulations!

[2013/10]

• Mr. Kikuchi joined as a new B3 member. Moreover, Mr. Ge, a research student, has entered the doctoral course.

[2013/09/30]

• We participated in a volleyball tournament between civil engineering laboratories. From Fukuda Lab, the “Planning M2 Team” and the “Asakura-Fukuda Lab Joint Team” participated in the tournament. The Asakura-Fukuda joint team won the championship in the lower league. Thank you very much for your hard work.

[2013/09/21 ~ 09/22]

• Members of the Fukuda Lab participated in the “Behavioral Modeling Summer School 2013” (http://bin.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/model13/),” which is now in its 12th year. This “Summer School” is a study session where participants create behavioral models by analyzing given data and compete on the importance and novelty of their models. The number of participating teams exceeded 10, with two teams from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and one team of six students from Fukuda Lab. We believe we were able to create a novel model through discussions among all the students, making use of their daily studies.

[2013/09/18]

• Prof. Fukuda is going on a business trip to Europe at the end of this month, so we went out for drinks at the laboratory. We enjoyed chatting while eating kushikatsu (deep-fried pork cutlets). Also, congratulations to Mr. Kameya (B4) and Mr. Kikuchi (B3) who passed the graduate school entrance exam!

• 2011 graduation thesis presentation

• 2011 Year-end Party

• Congratulatory party for Prof. Fukuda

• 2010 Welcome Party

• Farewell party for Alice [exchange student from Taiwan]

• 2008 Graduation ceremony

• 2008 Master and graduation theses

• Behavior Model Summer School and Autumn School
• Joint seminar camp with Okamoto Laboratory, University of Tsukuba

• Joint Seminar with National Singapore University

Mr. Azarel Chamorro Obra, a foreign student from Spain, has joined our group. He speaks fluent Japanese. He is interested in mobility sharing and ridesourcing, such as the Japanese long-distance ridesharing service, “Noteko”. Let’s work together.

Mr. Kobayashi (M1 student) has been studying abroad at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, for three months starting this month. At Chulalongkorn University, she will be assigned to Prof. Kasem Choocharukul‘s (far right in the photo) laboratory, where she will mainly conduct collaborative research on Wi-fi based traffic surveys in Thailand. (Prof. Fukuda also had a chance to visit Prof. Kasem’s lab when Ms. Kobayashi came to Japan to study.)

From 25th to 28th August, Asakura Laboratory and Kamiya Laboratory of University of the Ryukyus jointly conducted a survey of tourist flow in the Motobu Peninsula of Okinawa Island, where Churaumi Aquarium and other facilities are located. Two third-year students (Ms. Iokura and Mr. Shiroma) from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering also participated.

In Okinawa, there is a lack of quantitative data for analyzing how tourists travel between tourist attractions, and there is no data for creating a plan to encourage tourists who visit major tourist attractions to appropriately tour neighboring tourist attractions. This situation makes it difficult to properly evaluate the effectiveness of plans. In this survey, we target visitors to the Motobu Peninsula area of Okinawa’s main island for the purpose of sightseeing, and collect information sent from Wi-Fi devices installed in mobile devices such as smartphones owned by tourists through dedicated devices installed at major sightseeing spots, etc., in order to clarify what kind of touring behavior and facility-staying behavior tourists are engaged in within the area. This information is then used to clarify what kind of touring and facility-staying behavior tourists are engaging in in the area. In addition, a questionnaire survey (interview survey) of tourists was conducted at major tourist spots to collect detailed information.

We would like to thank the Okinawa General Bureau of the Cabinet Office, related local governments, and facility managers for their cooperation in conducting the survey. This survey was conducted as part of the “Research and Development of ‘Data-driven’ Traffic Demand and Spatial Management Using ETC2.0 Probe Information” (2016-2018), a specific project of the Road Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, “Research and Development of Technology to Improve the Quality of Road Policy”.

Ms. HJHASHIM NURUL ASYIKIN from UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA has joined ILCAA under the Academic Cooperation Agreement Program (ACAP) and will stay until the end of August.

From 21st to 23rd 2014, our laboratory held a seminar camp in Toyama and Kanazawa.

The participants observed the current state of transportation and cities, including LRT, urban development, and preservation of town houses, and gave their seminar presentations in the form of intensive lectures.

Day 1 (21st September 2014: Toyama City Tour and Seminar Presentation Part 1)

• Tokyo→Toyama(Airplane)
• Toyama Station→Iwasehama Station (Toyama Light Rail)
• Tour of the wholesale district of Iwasehama (Port of Toyama)
• Shopping street in the city (using a rental bicycle in the city)
• Seminar presentation Part 1 (microeconomic analysis)

1. Presentation Material(Kikuchi)

Day 2 (22nd September 2014: Seminar Presentation Part 2 and Part 3)

• Seminar Presentation Part2 (Microeconomic Analysis)

1. Presentation Material(Dantsuji)
2. Presentation Material(Wang)
3. Presentation Material(Bando)

• Seminar Presentation Part3 (Pattern Recoginition and Machine Learning: The second half will be in Tokyo. For details, please see the 2014 second semester lab seminar)

1. Presentation Material(Ito)
2. Presentation Material(Shinkai)
3. Presentation Material(Mizuguchi)

Day 3 (23rd September 2014: Kanazawa city tour)

• Toyama→Kanazawa (JR)
• Kanazawa City Machiya preservation tour
• Visit the transit mall in Kanazawa City
• Kanazawa→Komatsu (JR)
• Komatsu→Tokyo(Airplane)