PhD Defence Rowan Hoogervorst
In his dissertation Rowan Hoogervorst focused on improving both the scheduling and rescheduling of rolling stock, where he is specifically interested in further integrating these problems into the operational process of a railway operator. Railway transportation plays an important role in the Dutch mobility system. To make train travel both comfortable and affordable, it is essential for operators to efficiently use their train units. This means that these train units have to be scheduled such that a good balance between passenger service and operational costs is found. Moreover, efficient rescheduling of these train units is necessary to maintain a good service in case a disruption occurs in the railway system. Rowan defended his dissertation on Thursday, 14 October at 10:30h. His supervisors were Prof. Dennis Huisman (ESE) and Prof. Twan Dollevoet (ESE). The members of the Doctoral Committee were Prof. Albert Wagelmans(ESE), Prof. David Pisinger (DTU), and Prof. Valentina Cacchiani (University of Bologna).
About Rowan Hoogervorst
In his research, Rowan mainly focuses on problems in transportation and logistics, but his research interests also extend to other applied problems with a clear societal relevance. A characteristic of Rowan's work is that he tries to bridge the gap between theory and practice, where he uses a range of tools from mathematical programming to efficiently solve problems coming from practice. Rowan's work was published in journals such as Transportation Science and Information Sciences.
Moreover, he was awarded second place in the 2020 INFORMS RAS student paper award at the INFORMS annual meeting.
Rowan holds a master's degree in Econometrics and Management Science from Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He worked as a PhD candidate at the Econometric Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and was part of the PhD program of the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM). During his PhD, he regularly visited the department of Process quality and Innovation (π) of Netherlands Railways. Moreover, Rowan spent three-and-a-half months at the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) as part of a research visit to Prof. Ralf Borndörfer. He is currently working as a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) within the Management Science department.
Thesis Abstract
Railway transportation plays an important role in the Dutch mobility system. To make train travel both comfortable and affordable, it is essential for operators to efficiently use their train units. This means that these train units have to be scheduled such that a good balance between passenger service and operational costs is found. Moreover, efficient rescheduling of these train units is necessary to maintain a good service in case a disruption occurs in the railway system. In this thesis, we focus on improving both the scheduling and rescheduling of rolling stock, where we are specifically interested in further integrating these problems into the operational process of a railway operator.
First, we look at the solution methods that are used for solving both rolling stock problems. Here, we compare existing models for rolling stock scheduling and propose a new heuristic for the rolling stock rescheduling problem that can be easily extended for rich rolling stock settings. Second, we look at extensions of the traditional rolling stock rescheduling problem. Here, we consider the reduction of passenger delays through rolling stock rescheduling, where we find that rolling stock rescheduling can significantly reduce the delays experienced by passengers. Furthermore, we consider rescheduling the rolling stock together with those drivers that move train units at the stations.
View photos of Rowan's PhD Defence
Photos: Chris Gorzeman / Capital Images
