Smart transportation systems
Demand for innovative transport technologies
Human-environment interactions
Data-driven solutions to multi-modal, resilient and safe systems
Bounded rationality in transport behavior
Public transport planning
Active travel and sustainable development
Sigal Kaplan is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion. She previously worked at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She served as an “Eleonore Treftz” (German University Excellence Program) guest professor in TU-Dresden, and as an AIANI-Fellow in the University of Innsbruck. She is also an external collaborator with the Transportation Investigation Center (TRANSyT) in the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Sigal research perspective is that in smart, data-intensive, and technologically advanced transportation systems, the main challenge remains a better representation of human choice processes, behavioral patterns, and technology-human interfaces. Her main research themes are the demand for innovative transport technologies, human-environment interactions, data-driven solutions to multi-modal, resilient and safe systems, bounded rationality in transport behavior, Public transport planning, active travel and sustainable development. Her main research interest is improving the relationship between human decision-making and its representation in transport planning and models.
Sigal has supervised 30 international graduate students from 15 countries in four continents (Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa). Her students continued to pursue their academic and professional careers in national and international companies. She serves on an editorial board of the Journals: Transportation, Transportation Research Part D, and Transportation Research Part F. Sigal serves as a Member of the Israeli NTHS Advisory Committee, Ayalon Highways, she contributed to the Public Transportation Strategic Plan, and she currently serves as an advisor for the Trans-Israel Planning Division. Previously she served as the Vice President of the Israel Geography Association (2018) and as a management board member board member of Transport Today and Tomorrow. Sigal participated in leading European projects at the national (e.g., IMPROSA, ACTUM, SUSTAIN) and international level (SELECT, TRANSTOOLS 3).
Project status: ongoing 2024
Open for students
This study improves route choice set generation in terms of its behavioral realism, and computational complexity by looking at route choice set generation through the lens of ecological rationality. Ecological rationality postulates that people make decisions by drawing choice strategies from an adaptive toolbox containing logic, statistics, and heuristics. We postulate that a better understanding of the choice set simplification process before considering the available alternatives can generate behaviorally realistic routes with good predictive ability and tractability. The results will help to improve route choice in activity-based agent-based models and navigation apps. The study explores three directions: i) generating network availability heuristics by relating mental maps to spatial syntax, ii) understanding the use of network simplification heuristics for making inferences about travel time, iii) developing a neural network model for representing a two-stage choice set generation process, to predict simplified mental maps and extract the considered choice set.
ISF Research Grant.
Sigal Kaplan, Shlomo Bekhor
Project status: ongoing 2024
Open for students
We explore effective gamification strategies to encourage voluntary travel behavior change towards active travel. The study aims to understand what are the most effective gamification elements, and whether we can identify an appealing reward system by player type. The study investigates the attractiveness and effectiveness of a simple scoring scheme versus elaborated reward schemes, including a quest’s storytelling, earning virtual coins, unlocking additional tasks (mini-games) to advance the game, and acquiring items necessary to win the game. The effectiveness and attractiveness of game elements are explored by two field experiments. Two game apps are developed and tested in the project. A tailor-made gamification app tracking travel behavior will test the reward scheme’s effectiveness on real-world travel behavior. The first app compares two games: Walking Challenge and Urban Influencer. The second app will compare a point-based game to a story-telling (quest) based game. The data will be analyzed using discrete choice models. The results will provide insights related to cost-effective strategies for encouraging active travel.
The Israel Center for Smart Transportation Grant 2024.
