EPSRC DLA: Spatial interaction modelling for future transport demand simulation

PGR-P-2171

Key facts

Type of research degree: PhD
Application deadline: Friday 13 June 2025
Project start date: Wednesday 1 October 2025
Country eligibility: UK only
Funding: Competition funded
Source of funding: Research council
Supervisors: Professor Robin Lovelace and Dr Malcolm Morgan
Schools: Institute for Transport Studies

<h2 class="heading hide-accessible">Summary</h2>

One full scholarship is available in the Institute for Transport Studies for 2025/26 entry for a Home fee rated applicant. This is a highly competitive EPSRC Doctoral Landscape Award Studentship offering the award of UK fees, together with a tax-free maintenance grant (currently £19,237 for academic session 2024/25) for 3.5 years. This award is only available to Home fee rated applicants. Training and support will also be provided. Please note that whilst you may be successful in securing an academic offer for this project, this does not mean that you have been successful in securing an offer of funding. Funding is awarded on a competitive basis. The UK government is committed to delivering a net zero economy by 2050 (Hutton et al. 2024). Transport is now the most polluting sector and has made the least progress in reducing emissions. A significant barrier to implementing effective policies to enable fast and fair transport decarbonisation is the lack of models that provide the flexibility, detail, power and agility needed to simulate future transport demand, modal shift, and technology adoption in a nationally scalable and integrated framework. Current strategic transport models, such as the National Trip Ends Model, are designed for slow incremental change and often include assumptions like continuously rising car use (Marsden 2023). This makes them inadequate to simulate rapid and deep transport decarbonisation across the local, regional, and national scales needed to support effective policy and planning. Building on our experience developing national strategic planning models such as the Department for Transport funded Propensity to Cycle Tool www.pct.bike, the EPSRC funded Place-Based Carbon Calculator www.carbon.place, and high-impact international projects (Morgan and Lovelace 2020; Lovelace et al. 2017; Lovelace et al. 2024; Félix, Moura, and Lovelace 2025) the supervisory team is uniquely placed to guide an outstanding candidate to deliver a step change in the evidence base for transport decarbonisation.

<h2 class="heading hide-accessible">Full description</h2>

In this PhD project, the candidate will develop a new generation of spatial interaction models targeted at the needs of transport decarbonisation, building on recent advances in the field (Rowe, Lovelace, and Dennett 2024). SI models are a promising area of research as they can provide a high degree of geographic resolution without the cost and complexity of models such as Agent-Based Models. This will involve data engineering to process large national-scale origin-destination datasets from the UK and Spain, model development, and implementation in open-source software to test and validate the models against ground-truth data. Once the validated models can reliably predict past and present travel energy and emissions, they can be used to explore the effect of different policies to achieve net zero. Proposed Methods <ul> <li> Data engineering using new technologies such as Apache Arrow implemented in languages such as R and Python. </li> <li> Spatial interaction model development based on the latest research in the field and theoretical foundations. </li> <li> Model validation using open and ground-truth data from the Spanish Ministry of Transport and other sources. </li> <li> Construct scenarios of future transport demand based on plausible assumptions about future changes in technology, policy, and behaviour. </li> <li> Production of new datasets that can be used as a foundation for future research. </li> </ul> Datasets <ul> <li> Open origin-destination data from the Spanish Ministry of Transport </li> <li> National Trip Ends Model (NTEM) data from the UK Department for Transport </li> <li> UK Census Travel to Work data </li> <li> OD data for research purposes from Connected Places Catapult </li> </ul> Planned Outputs <ul> <li>New methods for spatial interaction modelling for transport decarbonisation research. In particular, SI models that include energy and emissions calculations and can adapt to local changes in technology and policy. </li> <li>New national transport energy demand estimates at a high geographic resolution, disaggregated by mode, purpose, engine technology, and time. </li> <li>Scenarios of future transport demand, energy, and emissions based on plausible assumptions about future changes in technology, policy, and behaviour </li> <li>Evidence on the combinations of demand management, modal shift, and technology adoption needed to achieve transport decarbonisation targets </li> <li>Open-access datasets that can be used as a foundation for future research </li> </ul> Expected Impact The project will provide a step change in the evidence base for transport decarbonisation, enabling more effective policy and planning. While this project focuses on the UK and Spain, the open-source models developed will be generalisable to any location. References Félix, Rosa, Filipe Moura, and Robin Lovelace. 2025. “Reproducible Methods for Modeling Combined Public Transport and Cycling Trips and Associated Benefits: Evidence from the biclaR Tool.” Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 117 (April): 102230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2024.102230. Hutton, Georgina, Iona Stewart, Nuala Burnett, Roger Tyers, Suzanna Hinson, and Xameerah Malik. 2024. “The UK’s Plans and Progress to Reach Net Zero by 2050.” https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9888/. Lovelace, Robin, Anna Goodman, Rachel Aldred, Nikolai Berkoff, Ali Abbas, and James Woodcock. 2017. “The Propensity to Cycle Tool: An Open Source Online System for Sustainable Transport Planning.” Journal of Transport and Land Use 10 (1). https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2016.862. Lovelace, Robin, Joey Talbot, Eugeni Vidal-Tortosa, Hussein Mahfouz, Elaine Brick, Peter Wright, Gary O’Toole, Dan Brennan, and Suzanne Meade. 2024. “Cycle Route Uptake and Scenario Estimation (CRUSE): An Approach for Developing Strategic Cycle Network Planning Tools.” European Transport Research Review 16 (1): 55. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12544-024-00668-8. Marsden, Greg. 2023. “Reverse Gear: The Reality and Implications of National Transport Emission Reduction Policies.” CREDS. https://www.creds.ac.uk/publications/reverse-gear-the-reality-and-implications-of-national-transport-emission-reduction-policies/. Morgan, Malcolm, and Robin Lovelace. 2020. “Travel Flow Aggregation: Nationally Scalable Methods for Interactive and Online Visualisation of Transport Behaviour at the Road Network Level.” Environment & Planning B: Planning & Design, July. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808320942779. Rowe, Francisco, Robin Lovelace, and Adam Dennett. 2024. “Spatial interaction modelling: a manifesto.” In, 177–96. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781802203233/book-part-9781802203233-19.xml.

<h2 class="heading">How to apply</h2>

Formal applications for research degree study should be made online through the <a href="https://www.leeds.ac.uk/research-applying/doc/applying-research-degrees">University's website</a>. You will need to create a login ID with a username and PIN. Please follow these instructions carefully or your application may not be considered. <ul> <li>For ‘Application type’ please select ‘Research Degrees – Research Postgraduate’.</li> <li>The admission year for this project is 2025/26 Academic Year.</li> <li>You will need to select your ‘Planned Course of Study’ from a drop-down menu. For this project, you must scroll down and select ‘EPSRC DLA Environment’. If you do not apply under this programme code, your application cannot be considered.</li> <li>Please state the funding you wish to be considered for is EPSRC Doctoral Landscape Award 2025/26: Environment.</li> <li>The project start date for this project is October 2025, please use this as your Proposed Start Date of Research.</li> <li>Please state clearly in the research information section that the research degree you wish to be considered for is EPSRC DLA: Spatial interaction modelling for future transport demand simulation as well as Professor Robin Lovelace as your proposed supervisor.</li> <li>You must provide the following documents in your application: <ul> <li>Full transcripts of all degree study, or if in final year of study, full transcripts to date</li> <li>Personal statement outlining your interest in the project</li> <li>CV</li> </ul> </li> </ul> If English is not your first language, you must provide evidence that you meet the University's minimum English language requirements (below). As an international research-intensive university, we welcome students from all walks of life and from across the world. We foster an inclusive environment where all can flourish and prosper, and we are proud of our strong commitment to student education. Across all Faculties we are dedicated to diversifying our community and we welcome the unique contributions that individuals can bring, and particularly encourage applications from, but not limited to Black, Asian, people who belong to a minority ethnic community, people who identify as LGBT+ and people with disabilities. Applicants will always be selected based on merit and ability.

<h2 class="heading heading--sm">Entry requirements</h2>

Applicants should normally have a bachelor degree with a minimum of 2:1 (Hons) or equivalent, or a good performance in a Masters level course. The applicant should have a degree in transport studies, engineering, computing, environmental analysis or a related field. They should also have programming/modelling experience (e.g. R, Python, or equivalent) and an understanding of the transport energy system. Other desirable experience/knowledge: transport modelling (e.g. spatial interaction modelling, four-step model, or similar); Geographical Information Systems (GIS) (e.g. QGIS, ArcGIS, or simliar); publishing open source software (e.g. GitHub); scenario creation/modelling; web tool development (e.g. HTML/Javascript). Applicants who are uncertain about the entry requirements for a particular research degree are advised to contact the Postgraduate Research Admissions team prior to making an application.

<h2 class="heading heading--sm">English language requirements</h2>

The minimum English language entry requirement for research postgraduate research study is an IELTS of 6.0 overall with at least 5.5 in each component (reading, writing, listening and speaking) or equivalent. The test must be dated within two years of the start date of the course in order to be valid. Some schools and faculties have a higher requirement.

<h2 class="heading">Funding on offer</h2>

This competitive EPSRC Doctoral Landscape Award offers the award of tuition fees at the Home rate, together with a tax-free maintenance grant (currently £19,237 for academic session 2024/25) for 3.5 years. Training and support will also be provided. This award is only available to Home fee rated applicants. Please note that whilst you may be successful in securing an academic offer for any project linked to this funding advertised project or own research proposal, this does not mean that you have been successful in securing an offer of funding. Funding is awarded on a competitive basis. Please refer to the <a href="https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/">UKCISA</a> website for information regarding fee status for Non-UK Nationals.

<h2 class="heading">Contact details</h2>

For further information please contact the Postgraduate Research Admissions team: <a href="mailto:env-pgr@leeds.ac.uk?subject=EPSRC%20DLA%3A%20Promoting%20Healthy%20Ageing%20through%20Diverse%20Mobility%20Options">env-pgr@leeds.ac.uk</a>.