Results of the 1st edition of “CODATU Prize of the best PhD Thesis on urban mobility in cities of developing countries”

For the first time, CODATU organized a « Prize of the best PhD Thesis on urban mobility in cities of developing countries », with the objectives to encourage young PhD holders and PhD students to excel in research on urban mobility (transport) in cities of the developing countries, but also to reinforce the interaction between researchers on the one hand, and professionals and policy makers, in the urban transport sector, on the other; though exposing the winning PhD to the conference audience and via the Website of CODATU, and finally to affirm the role of CODATU in boosting North-South and South-South cooperation in research and practice.

Applications were accepted from 11th July to 15^th August, 2017, before that the CODATU PhD Prize Committee composed of 6 distinguished Professors and Specialists gathered to examine the applications and deliberate on 10th october, 2017.

After the deliberation of the Committee,

Digvijay S. Pawar & Muhammad Adeel

have been designated as the 2 equally-ranked winners of the «Prize of the best PhD Thesis on urban mobility in cities of developing countries»!

Congrats to both of them!

The prize includes for both of them: 500€ each and a free entrance at our UMI-CODATU XVII Conference that will take place in Hyderabad from 4th to 6th november, 2017, where they will be invited to make a speech during the closing session.

PhD thesis of the two winners

Digvijay S. Pawar, Modelling Crossing Behaviour of Drivers and Pedestrians at Uncontrolled Intersections and Mid-block Crossings

Comments of the jury:

The subject of the PhD of Digvijay Pawar is very important for traffic safety and, hence, for safer mobility of residents in cities of the developing countries. The challenge is that the treatment of uncontrolled street intersections in cities of the developing countries is not well documented and studied previously in such organised and quantitative analysis. The research provides better understanding of driver and pedestrian behaviour while crossing the streets and the related traffic characteristics and environmental factors that contribute to crash risk seeking targeted design solution. Robust gap acceptance models were developed utilising real data to for better understanding of the dynamics of drivers and pedestrians at un-signalised intersections and mid-block locations in city street network. The input data serves well the methodology and the analysis is presented in meaningful Figures and Tables leading to reasonable results. The driven conclusions are logical. The work gives good matching between theory and practice. With some modifications the results are useful to cities of developing countries other than India, where the research is applied. The suggested future work is carefully given and the list of references of the thesis is very good and related to the subject. The applicant published seven papers based on the thesis (of which he was co-author with the PhD supervisors) in a number of admired Journals. He also enjoys reasonably good CV for his age and experience.

Muhammad Adeel, Transportation disadvantage and social exclusion in Pakistan

Comments of the jury:

The PhD thesis of Muhammad Adeel deals with crucial issues of transportation disadvantage and social exclusion. The challenge facing this topic is the limited information from the developing countries where, unlike the developed countries, the vulnerable population might be in majority and the dimensions of problem are more complex due to context specific social and developmental conditions. In this respect the thesis, addresses important matters relating to transport disadvantage and connections between mobility, services/infrastructure and social exclusion in urban and national contexts. While examining the transport disadvantage, public transport availability, affordability and quality are thoroughly studied as well. The objective of the work is clear, the summary of previous work, description of methodology and the analysis are well written and give justifiable arguments. A regression model is used to examine the effect of various social, economic and transport service variables on the frequency of social and recreational activity participations of surveyed respondents and, hence, the input data serves very well the methodology. The main results are robust and with some elaboration those can be useful to cities of developing countries other than Pakistan, on which the work is applied. The applicant published five papers based on the thesis (of which he was co-author with the PhD supervisors), four in an admired Journal and one in a conference. He also enjoys reasonably good CV for his age and experience.