R²ISE TRANSPORTATION LAB

Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering

Marquette University

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53233, USA

The R²ISE Transportation Lab is a transportation systems research group led by Dr. Zihao (Scott) Li in the Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering at Marquette University.

Our mission is to advance reliable, resilient, intelligent, safe, and efficient transportation systems through multimodal and agentic AI, social-cyber-physical systems analysis, connected and automated vehicle control, traffic flow modeling, and active safety intervention.

Marquette University campus and Milwaukee transportation landscape

Lab Focus

Multimodal and Agentic AI for Intelligent Transportation Systems: multimodal reasoning, benchmark development, knowledge-grounded AI, and decision-support tools for transportation operations.
Social-Cyber-Physical Transportation Resilience: resilience modeling for transportation infrastructure, freight and port systems, natural hazards, and recovery planning under disruption.
Connected and Automated Transportation Systems and Vehicle Control: connected and automated vehicle control, mixed-autonomy traffic, cooperative driving, and cyberattack-resilient vehicle systems.
Traffic Flow Theory and Modeling: analytical and data-driven traffic flow models, mixed traffic dynamics, signalized intersection delay, and headway and collision-risk modeling.
Active Traffic Safety Analysis and Intervention: crash-risk prediction, vulnerable road user protection, digital-twin safety evaluation, and AI-enabled safety intervention.

Prospective students and collaborators with overlapping interests are encouraged to review the publications, projects, and openings pages.

News

Aug 2026	Dr. Zihao (Scott) Li joins Marquette University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering in August 2026.
Jul 2026	Our work on traffic waves of linear adaptive cruise control appears in Transportation Research Part B and was accepted at the 26th ISTTT.
Jan 2026	CyPortQA, a benchmark for multimodal large language models in cyclone preparedness for port operation, is presented as an oral presentation at AAAI 2026.

Selected Publications

TR Part B

Unveiling Traffic Wave of Linear Adaptive Cruise Control: A Second-Order Macroscopic Traffic Flow Model

Zihao Li, Q. Lin, F. Pu, and 4 more authors

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2026

Accepted at the 26th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory

Bib

@article{li2026trafficwave,
  title = {Unveiling Traffic Wave of Linear Adaptive Cruise Control: A Second-Order Macroscopic Traffic Flow Model},
  author = {Li, Zihao and Lin, Q. and Pu, F. and Ahn, S. and Zhang, Y. and Jiang, J. and Zhou, Y.},
  journal = {Transportation Research Part B: Methodological},
  volume = {211},
  pages = {103506},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Accepted at the 26th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory},
}

TR Part D

U.S. Port Disruptions under Tropical Cyclones: Resilience Analysis by Harnessing Multiple-Source Dataset

C. Kuai, Zihao Li^*, Y. Zhang^*, and 3 more authors

Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2026

Bib

@article{kuai2026port,
  title = {{U.S.} Port Disruptions under Tropical Cyclones: Resilience Analysis by Harnessing Multiple-Source Dataset},
  author = {Kuai, C. and Li, Zihao and Zhang, Y. and Wang, X. B. and Lord, D. and Zhou, Y.},
  journal = {Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment},
  volume = {157},
  pages = {105420},
  year = {2026},
}

IEEE T-ITS

Leveraging Textual Description and Structured Data for Estimating Crash Risks of Traffic Violation: A Multimodal Learning Approach

Zihao Li, C. Ma, Y. Zhou, and 2 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2025

Bib

@article{li2025multimodalcrash,
  title = {Leveraging Textual Description and Structured Data for Estimating Crash Risks of Traffic Violation: A Multimodal Learning Approach},
  author = {Li, Zihao and Ma, C. and Zhou, Y. and Lord, D. and Zhang, Y.},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems},
  volume = {26},
  number = {7},
  pages = {9201--9213},
  year = {2025},
}

AAP

Adaptive Cruise Control under Threat: A Stochastic Active Safety Analysis of Sensing Attacks in Mixed Traffic

Zihao Li, Y. Zhou, J. Jiang, and 2 more authors

Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2025

Bib

@article{li2025accattack,
  title = {Adaptive Cruise Control under Threat: A Stochastic Active Safety Analysis of Sensing Attacks in Mixed Traffic},
  author = {Li, Zihao and Zhou, Y. and Jiang, J. and Zhang, Y. and Kulkarni, M. M.},
  journal = {Accident Analysis {\&} Prevention},
  volume = {209},
  pages = {107813},
  year = {2025},
}

TR Part C

Enhancing Vehicular Platoon Stability in the Presence of Communication Cyberattacks: A Reliable Longitudinal Cooperative Control Strategy

Zihao Li, Y. Zhou^*, Y. Zhang, and 1 more author

Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 2024

Bib

@article{li2024platoon,
  title = {Enhancing Vehicular Platoon Stability in the Presence of Communication Cyberattacks: A Reliable Longitudinal Cooperative Control Strategy},
  author = {Li, Zihao and Zhou, Y. and Zhang, Y. and Li, X.},
  journal = {Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies},
  volume = {163},
  pages = {104660},
  year = {2024},
}

AAAI

CyPortQA: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Cyclone Preparedness in Port Operation

C. Kuai, C. Wu, Y. Zhou, and 5 more authors

In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2026

Oral presentation

Bib

@inproceedings{kuai2026cyportqa,
  title = {{CyPortQA}: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Cyclone Preparedness in Port Operation},
  author = {Kuai, C. and Wu, C. and Zhou, Y. and Wang, X. and Yang, T. and Tu, Z. and Li, Zihao and Zhang, Y.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Oral presentation},
}