Probabilistic Technology Assessment of Complex Transportation Systems

Abstract

The demand for climate-neutral mobility solutions poses a challenge to the development of sustainable transport systems, as the design of such systems is usually aimed at market launches more than a decade in the future. In the field of multidisciplinary preliminary design, however, there is a lack of standardized methods with which the associated uncertainties can be modeled and the resulting influences on the design results quantified, which is why they often lack statistical significance. This talk presents the DLR research project PROTEKT ("Probabilistic Technology Assessment of Complex Transportation Systems"), which pursues the goal of making methods for the technological assessment of complex system architectures that take uncertainties into account accessible to users. To this end, a technology assessment framework is being developed to support the sustainable and cross-sectoral establishment of: (1) data and interface standards in multidisciplinary system design, (2) methodological expertise in probabilistic system analysis, and (3) software for data exploration and decision support under consideration of uncertainties. The project's consortium covers DLR's Aeronautics, Space, Energy, and Transportation sectors. The application of probabilistic methods in multidisciplinary design projects is intended to increase the informative value of the design results and promote cross-sector collaboration in digital design processes via standardized interfaces.