Abstract
Several important applications are placing demands on satisfactory characterization of the bi-directional interaction between kinetic and non-kinetic aspects in the mobility of people and commodities. Example applications include: emergency planning which needs to account for strong interplay of vehicular transport with inventory levels of critical supplies and/or people's psychologies; energy planning for normal day-to-day activities which considers the relation between travel patterns and energy usage; and, policy making for futuristic scenarios which examines the correlation between transportation behaviors and environmental/economic concerns. All these require new and holistic approaches for capturing the interplay of kinetic and non-kinetic aspects of mobility, as those aspects cannot be treated separately. Accurate characterization of such interplay requires proper integration of three distinct components, namely, data, models and computation. The availability of new sources of high-resolution data, and of detailed models together with recent advances in scalable computational methods now permits accurate capture of such an important interplay. This paper serves to highlight and argue that the interplay can in fact be captured in a high level of detail in simulations, enabled by the availability of new data, models and computational capabilities. Some of the challenges that are encountered in incorporating the interplay are outlined and plausible solution approaches are described in the context of large-scale scenarios involving mobility of people and commodities.
