Using Inquiry to Expose Undergraduates to ITS

摘要

In our rapidly evolving world, asking the right questions and properly defining problem boundaries is paramount to successful engineering design. These practices are especially vital for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), which can address a wide range of transportation problems, but which also can exacerbate these same problems. For example, ITS solutions that address the narrowly defined problem of improving traffic flow in an urban area can lead to more regional sprawl, and therefore more traffic and so on-reinforcing a negative feedback loop with ugly results. If the problem is instead framed as trying to reduce commuting times, entirely different and more sustainable ITS solutions may be found. The best planners proceed with caution to avoid prescribing solutions to perceived problems; instead, they take care to understand challenges to urban mobility and the propagating impacts that different development strategies may have.