Prof. Dr. Hilmi Berk Çelikoğlu, a faculty member at Istanbul Technical University's Faculty of Civil Engineering, has led an ambitious research project that combines advanced modeling and simulation techniques to understand and manage the problem of "congestion" in transportation networks, which are the blood vessels of cities. In the "Analysis of Network Current Propagation" project carried out within the scope of the European Union COST event titled MULTITUDE, it has implemented a vision that will form the basis of intelligent transportation systems by managing both the development of a new traffic flow model and the calibration of this model with real-time data.

Within the scope of the project, it was aimed to model more realistically how traffic flow spreads throughout a network and how congestion occurs. For this purpose, a new model was developed for the problem formulated as a dynamic network loading problem. The accuracy and reliability of the model were tested and calibrated using real-time traffic information, such as microwave radar and global positioning system data from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

"Traffic flow in a city is like a living, dynamic organism. Understanding and predicting the behavior of this organism has taken my scientific vision and engineering approach to the next level. Developing a theoretical model and calibrating it with real-time data, which is the instantaneous heartbeat of the city, solidified my identity as a researcher to build a bridge between the abstract and concrete worlds," says Çelikoğlu.

Prof. Dr. Hilmi Berk Çelikoğlu and his team, who led the project, not only developed an academic model, but also showed how this model can be used as a practical tool in real-time road information systems. The developed model produced concrete outputs such as estimating route travel times, deriving density measurement, performing service level analyses and modeling queue spread.

While ITU offers a tool to understand and manage the complex dynamics of urban transportation, it also provides our pioneering academics such as Prof. Dr. Hilmi Berk Çelikoğlu with the opportunity to make a lasting impact in the scientific world and smart city technologies. This project of Çelikoğlu is the product of an environment in which our university transforms its engineering knowledge into tangible benefits that improve the daily lives of city residents.