– A proposal from the Hamburg Authority for Transportation and Mobility Transition (BVM) –

Major construction projects are planned in Hamburg: In the summer of 2026, Stresemannstraße will be closed for the installation of the Sternbrücke, and we will set up numerous detours for the construction of the new U5 line.

We invite you to examine the effects of such detours in your master’s thesis. As a data source, you can use our floating car data (FCD), which provides a detailed, real-time sample of all vehicles—e.g., from navigation devices—at a granular level.

We pose the following key questions:

• How do major road closures affect motor vehicle traffic? How do large-scale route selection, traffic volume, and speed change?
• What can we learn to help prepare for large-scale construction sites?
• What additional insights can be derived from FCD?
• How can we infer the “actual” traffic situation from the FCD sample? Can FCD data be calibrated against other traffic count data? (This could potentially be addressed in a separate thesis.)

For this, we provide you with the following resources:

• Full access to the FCD data for the duration of your project
• Training on the FCD analysis software
• Additional traffic count data as needed (aVME, demand counts)
• Access to the newly developed Hamburg traffic model
• One hour of support per month

What we expect from you:

• Initial experience with large data sets
• An understanding of interactions within the transportation system
• Experience in modeling is a plus, even outside the transportation sector
• A desire to explore new methodological territory and grow both professionally and personally

Interested? Please feel free to contact us at vpl.rp@tu-dortmund.de or reach out directly to Sascha von Behren or Matthias Cremer-Schulte, who will be supervising the project.