
Prof. Shane Henderson
Cornell University
Talk:
Under the Hood of Bike Sharing
Abstract:
Cornell’s work on bike sharing with Citi Bike and its parent company Motivate relies on a combination of data analysis, stochastic modeling and optimization to help inform both the design and operation of the largest bike-sharing operations in North America. I’ll discuss our work and its impact, but focus on some of the inner workings of the stochastic modeling. This includes the use of (one of) the Poisson equation(s) in the computation of a central performance measure, a proof that the resulting objective function has important structural properties, and a heuristic underlying a simulation-optimization principle that is likely useful in many other contexts. Joint work with Daniel Freund, Nanjing Jian, Eoin O’Mahony, David Shmoys.