Recently, a team consisting of the Associate Professor He Bisheng of the Department of Transportation Engineering of the School of Transportation and Logistics, PhD student Zhang Hongxiang, and master student Peng Hui won the third place in the Problem Solving Competition of the Informs Railway Application Department of the 2020 Operations Research and Management Research Association.

Figure 1 Notification of finalists

As one of the largest and most influential academic conferences in the field of operations research and management science, this year's INFORMS annual meeting was held online on November 8-13 due to the impact of the COVID-19. As an important branch of INFORMS, the Problem Solving Competition organized by the Railway Applications Department each year aims to provide a platform for solving large-scale and complex decision-making problem in the railway field. The competition questions often come from the actual railway field. Every year, the competition attracts many experts, scholars, teachers, students and railway industry practitioners from all over the world to conduct research on difficult problems in the railway field.

Figure 2 Online defense

The topic of this competition focuses on the estimation of the arrival time of freight trains. In the context of the continuous impact of aviation and road transportation on railway freight, the accuracy of the arrival time of freight trains is even more important. In addition to the large-scale complex road network and the increasing number of trains, random delays of locomotives, crews, and shunting yards, train levels, section occupancy, and station resource occupancy are all issues that need to be considered during dispatch. After 5 months of research by Associate Professor He Bisheng and two graduate students, with the goal of minimizing train arrival delay time, they developed a comprehensive analysis of the random delay probability distribution and confidence level. The mathematical optimization model of the capacity problem of industrial lines and shunting lines was solved by rolling time domain algorithm, and the paper entitled "An optimization method for train rescheduling and travel time estimation problem" was completed. The solution method and solution results of the paper were unanimously affirmed by the judges. It stood out from 38 teams from around the world and was invited to showcase the research results at the INFORMS annual meeting held on November 8, and finally won the third place. At the same time, this is also the second time that Associate Professor He Bisheng has won this award.

Figure 3 Award announcement

This competition fully demonstrated the latest research results of the School of Transportation and Logistics in the field of rail transit, and improved the influence of the research team. The teachers and students of the team also broadened their academic horizons and gained training, which is beneficial to cooperation between the colleges, universities and research institutions.