Frank Southworth

Principal Research Scientist

Transportation planning methods, freight and passenger demand and supply modeling, sustainable transportation systems and their supply chains, land-use transportation interaction, energy efficient urban form, public transit system planning and cost-benefit analysis

Bio

Dr. Southworth is a Senior Research and Development Staff member at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he has worked for the past 23 years. In August 2006 he took up a joint appointment as a Principal Research Scientist in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to joining ORNL and Georgia Tech, Dr Southworth was a faculty member in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Illinois, and a research officer in the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds in England.

Since joining ORNL Dr Southworth has been a principal investigator on more than 50 R&D projects dealing with a wide range of transportation planning issues. Dr. Southworth has received a number of awards for his research from government agencies and academic associations, and has published over 150 peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters and technical reports. He has been involved in the development of 24 different software systems to date. Many of these software systems employ geographic information systems (GIS) technology. Most of this work has been with federal agencies, including various branches of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, and Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Agency for International Development. Dr Southworth has also completed R&D projects for the New York and Tennessee Departments of Transportation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the National Science Foundation and the Pew Center for Global Climate Change. Over the past two decades Dr. Southworth has served on a number of regional, national and international peer review panels and study groups dealing principally with data collection issues and the application of statistical methods and mathematical models in transportation planning. He also serves on a number of Transportation Research Board Committees dealing with freight planning issues.

Recent Publications

PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

  • F. Southworth and Garrow, L.A. (2010) Travel Demand Modeling. Prepared for the Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Forthcoming.
  • F. Southworth and A. Sonnenberg (2010) A Set of Comparable Carbon Footprints for Highway Travel in Metropolitan America. ASCE Transportation Engineering Journal Forthcoming.
  • B. A. Weigel, F. Southworth and M. D. Meyer (2010) Calculators for estimating greenhouse gas emissions from public transit agency vehicle fleet operations. Transportation Research Record. Forthcoming.
  • M.A. Brown, F. Southworth and A. Sarzynski (2010) Transitioning to a low-carbon climate smart metropolitan America. Chapter 8 in Energy Security: Economics, Politics, Strategies, and Implications, C.Pascual and J. Elkind (Eds). Brookings Institution Press.
  • F. Southworth (2009) Freight Flow Models. Chapter 5 in Intermodal Transportation: Moving Freight in a Global Economy. ENO Foundation, Washington, D.C. Forthcoming.
  • M.A. Brown, F. Southworth and A. Sarzynski (2008) The geography of metropolitan carbon footprints Policy and Society 23: 1-20.
  • F. Southworth (2008) Multi-Criteria sensor placement for emergency response. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy 1.1 : 37-58.
  • M.A. Brown and F. Southworth (2008) Mitigating climate change through green buildings and smart growth. Environment and Planning A 40 :653-675.
  • M.A. Brown, F. Southworth and A. Sarzynski (2008) Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America. The Brooking Institution, Washington, D.C.
  • F. Southworth and M.R. Wigan (2008) Movement of goods, services and people: entanglements with sustainability implications. Chapter 9 in Building Blocks for Sustainable Transport: Obstacles, Trends, Solutions. A. Perrels,V. Himanen and M. Lee-Gosselin (Eds.).

PEER REVIEWED TECHNICAL REPORTS

  • F. Southworth (2010) Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions from Freight Logistics. White paper written for The Pew Center for Global Climate Change. Washington, D.C.
  • F. Southworth and P.S. Hu (2010) The American Long Distance Personal Travel Data and Modeling Program: A Roadmap. Report prepared for the Office of Highway Policy Information Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation Washington D.C. 20590.
  • TRB (2009) Driving and the Built Environment: The Effects of Compact Development on Motorized Travel, Energy Use, and CO2 Emissions. Transportation Research Board Special Report 298, Washington D.C.(Committee co-author)
  • F. Southworth, B.E. Peterson, S-M. Chin, H-L. Hwang and D. Davidson (2009) On the development of some new FAF products. Freight Analysis Framework 3. Technical Memorandum No. 4. Report prepared for the Office of Freight Management and Operations, Federal Highway Administration, Washington D.C.
  • F. Southworth (2009) Potential improvements to the FAF3 methodology: flow disaggregation methods. Freight Analysis Framework 3. Technical Memorandum No.3. Report prepared for the Office of Freight Management and Operations Federal Highway Administration, Washington D.C.
  • F. Southworth, H-L. Hwang and S-M. Chin (2009) An assessment of the impacts of data source changes on FAF3 development. Freight Analysis Framework 3. Technical Memorandum No. 2. Report prepared for the Office of Freight Management and Operations, Federal Highway Administration, Washington D.C.
  • F. Southworth, M. D. Meyer and B. A. Weigel (2009) Summary of Climate Change Implications from Transportation and Transit's Role. Prepared for the Office of Technology, Federal TransitAdministration, Washington D.C.
  • F. Southworth, A. Sonnenberg, and M.A. Brown (2008) The Transportation Energy and Carbon Footprints of the 100 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas. Prepared for the Metropolitan Program, Brooking Institution, Washington, D.C. (Also available as WP37. School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA).
  • F. Southworth and Z. Patterson (2008) Emerging methodologies in freight demand modeling. Prepared as Chapter 5 in in Freight Transportation Modeling TRB Transportation Research E-Circular.

SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS AND OTHER RESEARCH PAPERS

  • F. Southworth, T. Reuscher and P. S. Hu (2009) Estimation and Short Range Forecasting of County Level Vehicle Miles of Travel and Motor Fuel Use for the United States (through 2015). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831.
  • F. Southworth and A. Sonnenberg (2008) Estimation of the Energy and Carbon Footprints for Public Transit Systems in the Nation's 100 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas. Prepared for the Metropolitan Program, Brooking Institution, Washington, D.C.
  • F. Southworth, M.D. Meyer and M. Bronzini (2008) Defining future needs. In Freight Demand Modeling. Tools for Public-Sector Decision Making. Conference Proceedings 40. Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C.: 41-46.

Recent Presentations

  • F. Southworth. (2009) "Realizing Low Carbon Cities: Challenges and Opportunities". International Workshop Towards Low Carbon Cities: Understanding and Analyzing Urban Energy and Carbon. Nagoya University /Global Carbon Project/ National Institute for Environmental Studies/ Ministry of Environment, Japan. Nagoya, Japan, February 16, 2009.
  • M.A. Brown and F. Southworth (2008) "Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America." Imperial College, London, June, 2008.