PUG 2026 Session Recordings#
Video recordings from the 4th Annual POLARIS User Group Workshop, held June 17 - 19, 2026 at Thomas Beckham Hall, University of Illinois Chicago. Talk titles, presenters and summaries follow the program agenda; recordings are grouped by day and session in the order they were presented.
Day 1 - Wednesday, June 17, 2026#
Welcome and Opening Remarks#
Introductions from Argonne and the U.S. Department of Energy, an overview of Argonne’s transportation programs and of vehicle and mobility systems modeling, and the state of POLARIS.
0-1 Message from the Transportation Technologies Office, U.S. Department of Energy
Alexis Zubrow, Program Manager, EEMS
Opening remarks from the U.S. Department of Energy on the program context for POLARIS and EEMS.
Download Video0-2 Overview of Argonne Transportation Programs
Aymeric Rousseau, Transportation Program Director, ANL
A welcome to PUG 2026 and a tour of the transportation research portfolio at Argonne National Laboratory.
Download Video0-3 Introduction to Vehicle and Mobility Systems Modeling at Argonne
Vincent Freyermuth, Department Director, Vehicle and Mobility Systems, ANL
How POLARIS fits within the modeling tools and capabilities of the Vehicle and Mobility Systems department.
Download Video0-4 POLARIS Overview and Highlights
Joshua Auld, Manager, Transportation Systems and Mobility, ANL
What POLARIS is, where it stands today, and the highlights of the past year of work.
Download VideoSession 1 - Software Development and Co-Simulation#
Moderator: Joshua Auld
1-1 State of POLARIS - Software
Griffin White, Joshua Auld, ANL
The December 2025 release brought expanded documentation on workflows, convergence, analysis and calibration, plus improvements to database restoration, KPI comparisons, error reporting, profiling and output metadata. Modeling realism advanced through school and parking choice, mixed logit mode choice, managed lanes for autonomous vehicles, freight behavior, and weather and accident events.
Download Video1-2 Deployment of the UrbanSim-POLARIS-CityBES Co-Simulation Platform
Gopindra Sivakumar Nair, ANL
A co-simulation platform linking the UrbanSim land use model, POLARIS, and the CityBES building energy model: land use responds to POLARIS travel times and accessibility, population synthesis stays consistent with UrbanSim block-level marginals, and simulated building occupancies drive CityBES energy loads. Used to evaluate telecommuting and congestion pricing scenarios.
Download Video1-3 Modeling Transportation-Grid Interactions
Mohammed Abujubbeh, ANL
A co-simulation framework integrating POLARIS into Argonne's grid modeling framework through the HELICS platform, demonstrated on the Chicago region across model years 2020 to 2045 in five-year increments.
Download Video1-4 Integrating Demographic Microsimulation (DEMOS) into MPO Travel Demand Modeling: Implementation Insights from SCAG and Future Pathways
Shivam Sharda, NLR
DEMOS simulates household and demographic dynamics over time, giving MPO travel demand models temporally and spatially consistent population inputs and supporting long-term socioeconomic forecasting for regional planning.
Download Video1-5 SynthFirm Freight Modeling Framework: Overview, Applications, and POLARIS Integration
Cristian Poliziani, LBNL
SynthFirm is an open-source framework that synthesizes firms, establishments, national and international freight demand, multimodal shipment flows, and vehicle fleets. The talk covers MPO adoption and ongoing DOE Synergy work to integrate SynthFirm with POLARIS as a firm-synthesis option.
Download VideoSession 2 - Extended Scope in Transportation Models with a Freight Focus#
Moderator: Olcay Sahin
2-1 Developing a National Long-Distance Travel Model
Yantao Huang, ANL
The national long-distance passenger models in POLARIS - trip generation, purpose, season, party size, destination, mode choice, departure time and duration - and how multiday simulation represents 30 days of long-distance travel behavior.
Download Video2-2 Behavioral and Model-Related Updates for Freight Simulation
Hui Shen, with Olcay Sahin, Yantao Huang and Hyunseop Uhm, ANL
Enhanced POLARIS freight shipment decisions covering shipment size, mode choice, stop counts, stop facility type and stop locations. Waterway and intermodal operations are incorporated, enabling multimodal routing analysis and system-wide VMT, VHT and economic outcomes.
Download Video2-3 Freight Automation in Long-Haul Trucking
Hyunseop Uhm, ANL; Peter Hudson and Matt Battifarano, Aurora
An optimization framework for hub-to-hub autonomous truck corridors across a city-to-city freight network in the U.S. Sunbelt, using real freight flow data and a custom branch-and-price algorithm to solve the mixed-integer network design problem at scale.
Download Video2-4 Modeling and Calibration of Supplier Selection Problem in Freight Agent-Based Simulations
Abdelrahman Ismael, Taner Cokyasar, ANL
A large-scale calibrated agent-based supplier selection model with a probabilistic heuristic for international shipments, integrating inter-sector trade relationships, transportation costs and supplier ratings. Tested across Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles.
Download VideoSession 2 - Non-Road Transportation#
2-5 Scalable Rail Block Design for POLARIS Freight Accessibility Modeling
Xuesong Zhou, Arizona State University
A reproducible rail block design and yard-to-yard travel time pipeline for POLARIS freight accessibility modeling, with a Lagrangian relaxation track over roughly 47,000 nodes and 1,500 yards and a C++ column-generation kernel supporting 2,000+ yards and 160,000 OD pairs at national scale.
Download Video2-6 Enhancing Freight Rail Energy Efficiency through Locomotive Innovations
George Burke, ANL
Advanced locomotive powertrains and electrification strategies evaluated on the BNSF Southern Transcon corridor with Autonomie Rail - conventional diesel, battery-electric, hybrid locomotives, and hybrid consists with discontinuous catenary - assessed for energy use, performance and cost.
Download VideoDay 2 - Thursday, June 18, 2026#
Session 3 - Parking and Transit#
Moderator: Krishna Murthy Gurumurthy
3-1 Freight Parking Modeling and Recent Parking-Related Studies
Krishna Murthy Gurumurthy, Abdelrahman Ismael, ANL
The state of parking modeling in POLARIS, including recent work extending personal-vehicle parking to freight parking for B2C and B2B trip types, with summaries of related studies and the metrics they capture.
Download Video3-2 Integrated Optimization of Scheduling and Flexible Charging in Mixed Electric-Diesel Urban Transit Bus Systems
Taner Cokyasar, with Hadi Bhidya, ANL
A mixed-integer linear program that jointly optimizes fleet composition, vehicle scheduling and flexible partial charging for mixed fleets of battery-electric and diesel buses, using slow and fast chargers at garages and terminal stations to minimize combined purchase and operating cost.
Download Video3-3 Transit Network Design Using Multi-Commodity Network Flow Optimization
Omer Verbas, ANL
An optimization framework that designs transit routes from scratch or expands an existing system, formulating link investment and multimodal path flows as a minimum-cost multi-commodity network flow problem solved with a MILP solver and illustrated on the Dallas-Fort Worth network.
Download VideoSession 5 - Demand, Data and Calibration#
Moderator: Nazmul Arefin Khan
5-2 PolarisOpt: Model Calibration and Exploration Library
Vadim Sokolov, George Mason University
An open-source Python library consolidating the POLARIS calibration workflow - LHS designs, Bayesian optimization and file management - into one reproducible tool. Studies are configured in YAML with a SQLite SampleStore as the single source of truth, and a plugin architecture supports custom surrogates, metrics and HPC backends.
Download Video5-3 Using G-forces from Connected Vehicles as a Proactive Indicator of Crash Risk
David Lillo-Trynes, CompassIOT
Connected vehicle point-level data - particularly G-force events such as hard braking and swerving - used as a leading indicator of where serious crashes are likely to occur next, ahead of the sparse and lagging crash records agencies traditionally rely on.
Download Video5-4 Walk Trip Estimation and Spatial Distribution in the North Central Texas Region
Ran Tu, North Central Texas Council of Governments
Using POLARIS for North Central Texas, walk trips are found to concentrate heavily in downtown Dallas, which accounts for over 50% of regional pedestrian activity. Full network assignment of all walk trips gives a stronger basis for prioritizing pedestrian infrastructure.
Download Video5-5 Implementing POLARIS as a Statewide Model in Vermont: Challenges and Opportunities
Tanzila Tabassum, University of Vermont
POLARIS deployed as the first statewide activity-based travel demand model, replacing Vermont's four-step TransCAD model. As of May 2026 the full state model runs with synthesized population, simulated trips and link-level daily volumes, targeting full calibration within two years.
Download VideoSession 6 - Alternative Powertrains#
Moderator: Taner Cokyasar
6-1 Joint Optimization of Charging Pricing Strategies and Infrastructure Configuration in Urban Networks
Ali Zockaie, Michigan State University
A large-scale framework jointly optimizing DCFC infrastructure and spatiotemporal pricing with realistic travel patterns and probabilistic charging behavior. Optimized dynamic pricing flattens demand profiles, reduces peak loads and lowers investment cost at comparable levels of user service.
Download Video6-2 Dynamic Smart Charging through Integrated Agent-Based and Optimization Modeling: Impacts on Fleet Operations and System-Level Performance
Lin Su, University of Texas at Austin
A rolling V2G optimization model embedded in POLARIS, with feedback between (dis)charging decisions for mixed EV groups and evolving system states. V1G shifts charging from peak hours to midday, and joint fleet-household V2G further expands discharge capacity and pollutant reductions.
Download Video6-3 Linking POLARIS with AutonomieAI to Scale Energy Analysis Across Powertrains and Technology Levels
Krishna Murthy Gurumurthy, ANL
Bridging AutonomieAI and POLARIS to scale energy analysis from a sample of trajectories to the full simulation, covering how AutonomieAI was set up, its modes of operation, and the validation done on each.
Download VideoDay 3 - Friday, June 19, 2026#
Session 7 - Market Analysis and Emerging Technologies#
Moderator: Charbel Mansour
7-1 Simulation-Based Cost Analysis of Advanced Truck Technologies in Digital Freight Platforms: TechScape Approach
Natalia Zuniga-Garcia, with Charbel Mansour, ANL
Economic and operational viability of emerging Class 8 truck powertrains, compared on levelized cost of driving and total cost of ownership using real trip data from a national transportation management platform, POLARIS + Autonomie energy workflows, and TechScape cost projections.
Download Video7-2 Market Analysis of New Sales and Vehicle Registrations
Dave Gohlke, ANL
Argonne's tracking of vehicle manufacturing, new sales and fleetwide registrations, summarizing the current vehicle market and recent shifts in size classes and powertrains, and what they imply for fuel consumption and consumer spending.
Download Video7-3 Economic Impacts Modeling with JOBS
Yue Ke, ANL
The JOBS suite of spreadsheet tools estimates the economic impacts of building and operating vehicle refueling infrastructure and of manufacturing and using ICEVs and EVs, applying input-output analysis to trace ripple effects through a regional economy.
Download Video7-4 Investigating Cyberthreats in Transportation Systems: Data and Modeling Challenges
Rajan Bhusal, Peipei Xu, Roger Chen, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Data and modeling challenges in bringing cybersecurity threats into network-scale models like POLARIS to simulate system-level consequences, with actionable directions as electrification, autonomy and connectivity grow.
Download VideoSession 9 - Transit and Multimodal#
Moderator: Omer Verbas
9-1 Robotaxis as Transit: Simulation-Informed Benefit-Cost Comparisons
Kentaro Mori, University of Texas at Austin
6,000 four-seat shared autonomous vehicles are needed to serve Austin's current ridehailing and bus riders with door-to-door dynamic ridepooling - over 10% fewer with integrated services and bus stop pickups. Agency-owned SAVs come in at least 23% below the current bus system but at least 68% above autonomous battery electric buses.
Download Video9-2 Algorithmic Feeder Bus Design in a Multimodal Network
Arturo Ramirez, University of Maryland, College Park
An Ant Colony algorithm designs fixed-length feeder bus routes connecting passengers to urban rail stations, minimizing all-to-all user travel cost across walk, taxi and bus access and egress on a custom multimodal network with demand disaggregated to individual buildings.
Download Video9-3 Equity-Aware Transit Service Evaluation in POLARIS Using Router-Based Metrics: A Baltimore Case Study
David Adegoke, Syracuse University
A routing-based evaluation using POLARIS skims and BatchRouter to assess transit scenarios without running the full activity-based model, applied to a Baltimore case study on a Maryland MPO network with modified routes, stops and service frequency.
Download VideoNot recorded#
The following agenda items have no recording available:
Day 0 (Tuesday, June 16) Hands-On Training - the Polaris-Studio setup and test-model tutorial.
2-7 Simulating Air Taxi Integration in Urban Mobility Systems - Nirmit Prabhakar, ANL.
5-1 POLARIS Demand Modeling Updates - Nazmul Arefin Khan and Jan Christoph Zill, ANL.
Session 8 - Poster Session (8-1 through 8-9).