Engineering Commons^™

Optimizing The Potential Of Highway Safety Investment, Riana Tanzen

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Highway safety management aims to prevent crashes and reduce the resulting frequency and severity within the limit of available resources. The identification of potentially hazardous sites and investment on safety treatments have been fundamental to fulfill this goal. However, having many highway safety improvement projects in hand, safety professionals need to evaluate several different alternatives and allocate the limited funds to the ones that would provide the highest return on investment. Hence, prioritizing the safety projects based on their potential to achieve the greatest safety benefit is crucial. Ineffective prioritization can distribute funds to locations with less potential for improvement …

Induced Travel Demand: Measuring The Contribution Of Additional Lane Miles On The Increase In U.S. Vehicle Miles Traveled From 1980 To 2019, Brandon Ivanchak

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Induced travel demand is the effect of increasing the amount of vehicle miles traveled because of an increase in roadway capacity. It is explained by the idea that increasing capacity makes driving on those roads more desirable, thereby causing more people to use them. In1962, Robert Downs postulated that “On urban commuter expressways, peak hour traffic congestion rises to meet maximum capacity,” referring to this as the law of peak hour traffic congestion. Since then, there have been ongoing debates about the effectiveness and environmental impact of roadway expansion projects, and efforts to quantify induced demand to inform those debates. …

Protocols And Architecture For Privacy-Preserving Authentication And Secure Message Dissemination In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks, Shafika Showkat Moni

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

The rapid development in the automotive industry and wireless communication technologies have enhanced the popularity of Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Today, the automobile industry is developing sophisticated sensors that can provide a wide range of assistive features, including accident avoidance, automatic lane tracking, semi-autonomous driving, suggested lane changes, and more. VANETs can provide drivers a safer and more comfortable driving experience, as well as many other useful services by leveraging such technological advancements. Even though this networking technology enables smart and autonomous driving, it also introduces a plethora of attack vectors. However, the main issues to be sorted out …

Development Of Active Learning Data Fixing Tool With Visual Analytics To Enhance Traffic Near-Miss Diagnosis, Jinyu Pei

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This study proposes a software to upgrade the UCF SST's Automated Roadway Conflicts Identification System (ARCIS), a pixel-to-pixel manner automated safety diagnostics and conflict identification system. The system is developed to extract vehicles' trajectories and traffic parameters using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) video and utilizing deep learning techniques. A user-friendly tool to improve rapid system development with active-learning, data analysis, and visualization techniques is introduced, which is capable of traffic safety near-miss diagnostics based on the ARCIS output. Multiple approaches are used to enhance the system performance, including video stabilization, object filtering, stitching multiple videos, vehicle detection and tracing. In …

Understanding Perceptions Of Vulnerable Roadway Users On Autonomous Vehicles, Md Tawhidur Rahman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Public perceptions have been playing an important role in the development of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology. Besides AV and non-AV users, the perceptions of vulnerable roadway users are critical, as AVs will become a part of multimodal transportation system. Pedestrians and bicyclists are among the vulnerable groups of roadway users, as they are relatively unprotected compared to the occupants of AVs or non-AVs. Although AV’s capability to monitor other vehicles has been documented in many studies, there are concerns about AV’s capability in monitoring pedestrians and bicyclists. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to investigate the perceptions of pedestrians …

North 14th Street Corridor Improvements Project, Ashley Nguyen, Samantha Corey, Maricela Paramo Reyes, Pooja Rajeev

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The following project report was a study of the North 14^th Street corridor ranging from Adams Street to Virginia Street conducted by University of Nebraska-Lincoln students for a senior design capstone project. Main focuses of the project were the intersection of Adams and 14^th Street and the 14^th Street bridges over Cornhusker Highway and Oak Creek. Study of this area included work in transportation, traffic, structural, geotechnical, water resources, and environmental engineering. However, this report done by students should not take the place of work done by licensed professional engineers.

This project was done in collaboration with …

Definition And Detection Of Hypervulnerabilities Using A Framework For Assessing Port Resilience, Katherine Smith, Rafael Diaz, Yuzhong Shen, Francesco Longo

VMASC Publications

Long term plans for maritime ports are identifying investments that will increase their capacity while decreasing their environmental footprint and operating costs. These changes are leading to increases in complexity at a time when leaner practices are driving investments to become more strategic. As such, this work proposes a generalized definition that allows a system or entity to be classified as exceedingly vulnerable by comparing it to other entities. This definition is developed from a set of definitions gathered from disparate fields. From this definition grounded in theory, the initial rules for complex system implementation are developed and demonstrated on …

Impact Of Covid-19 On Aviation-Wildlife Strikes Across Europe, Isabel C. Metz, Marta Giordano, Dionysios Ntampakis, Marianna Moira, Anneke Hamann, Rosanne Blijleven, Jürgen J. Ebert, Alessandro Montemaggiori

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Collisions between aircraft and wildlife (i.e., wildlife strikes) pose a serious threat toward the safety of aircraft, its crew, and passengers. The effects of COVID-19 related travel restrictions on wildlife strikes are unknown. With this study, we aim to address this information gap by assessing the changes of wildlife hazard management performance across European airports during the lockdown period (e.g., period of reduced operations and borders closure in spring 2020). We also sought to raise awareness of the importance of wildlife strike prevention in times of reduced operations. The objective of our study was to compare wildlife strike data before …

Comparative Analysis Of Bridge Abutment Types, David Fell

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project was developed to serve as a brief overview of design practices and considerations in the selection of highway bridge abutment types. This involved a review of literature in the form of reviewing national design guides and department of transportation (DOT) requirements from both US DOTs and international DOTs. The abutment types covered in this research included conventional reinforced concrete abutments with bearings, integral abutments, and semi-integral abutments. This research focused solely on highway bridge abutments, particularly on Ohio Department of Transportation design requirements due to their extensive use of semi-integral abutments. Superstructure elements and geometric requirements are primary …

Improving Traffic Efficiency At Tallmadge Circle Considering Autonomous Vehicles, Benjamin Mallinak

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In a set of behavioral recommendations outlined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), navigating a roundabout is listed as one of twenty-eight regularly required abilities that a highly automated vehicle must be able to complete. As autonomous vehicle technology is developed, refined, and proven to meet these ability expectations, roundabouts and traffic circles that experience high volumes of traffic are anticipated to benefit from an improved efficiency of traffic flow. For Tallmadge Circle and other similar traffic control configurations, the degree of improvement will be dependent on the steps taken to utilize the capabilities of the autonomous vehicles …

Sustainability And Environmentally Friendly Methods To Travel Over Waterways, Kendall Kubus

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Throughout daily traveling, the main structures used are bridges and tunnels. Bridges are used as overpasses over valleys, canyons, and areas that require a large amount of dirt fill to bring the roadway up to the proper grade. Tunnels are underpasses through mountains, under city limits and waterways. The benefits of building a bridge structure is little preparation goes into earth-work and the transportation of aggregate materials. There is some time spent testing surrounding soil to determine the process that will need to occur for foundation preparations in bridge columns. Options for foundation include different types of drilled shafts, caissons, …

Cruser Place Green Streets Plan, Neal Friedman

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Combining green and complete street design techniques leads to multiple environmental, social and economic benefits that often enhance each other's effectiveness. In urban areas confronting increased pressures of sea level rise, green streets, which incorporate landscaped features or vegetative areas to manage stormwater within the right of way, can be crucial pieces of pedestrian oriented urban design and multimodal planning frameworks that consider and plan for diverse, complementary transportation options. This plan works with the Colonial Place and Riverview Civic League as well as the Norfolk Preservation Collective to come up with green street design recommendations in order to strengthen …

Towards An Artificial Intelligence Based Decision Support System To Evaluate Various Transit Projects, Patricio F. Vicuna

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation addressed a subset of the Transit Network Design Problem (Transit-NDP), where the main evaluation parameter is the impact of various transit projects – Bus Lines, Tram, Light Rail, Rail – on the Network Travel Time (NTT) of the vehicles. The NTT is estimated using the static four-step travel demand model (trip generation, trip distribution, modal split, and traffic assignment). A set of five metaheuristic models were developed and implemented for this specific Transit-NDP, namely, Simulated Annealing (SA)-VISUM, Simulated Annealing-Random Forest Regression Model (SA-RF), Tabu Search (TS)-Random Forest (TS-RF), SA-RF-TS-VISUM, SA-RF-VISUM. These models were evaluated using two test networks …

Engineering Countermeasures For Left Turns At Signalized Intersections: A Review, Siby Samuel, Amandeep Singh, Yusuke Yamani

Psychology Faculty Publications

Left turn crashes can impact the safety of the drivers due to the speed and angle at which they occur. Left turns are specifically reported to affect older drivers more than the other types of crashes. This paper provides a review of the existing engineering countermeasures that have been evaluated to improve driver safety at left turns. Twenty- eight studies on left turn signal displays (protected left turns, flashing yellow arrow, and digital countdown timers), intersection geometry (offset left turn lanes, diverging diamond interchange, roundabouts, exit lanes for left turn, left turn bay extension, and contraflow left turn lanes), and …

Air Passenger Demand Forecast Through The Use Of Artificial Neural Network Algorithms, Juan Gerardo Muros Anguita, Oscar Díaz Olariaga

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Airport planning depends to a large extent on the levels of activity that are anticipated. In order to plan facilities and infrastructures of an airport system and to be able to satisfy future needs, it is essential to predict the level and distribution of demand. This document presents a short- and medium-term forecast of the demand for air passengers carried out through a specific case study (Colombia), in which the impact of the pandemic period due to COVID-19 on air traffic was taken into account. To make the forecast, an algorithm that implements techniques based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) …

Exploring The Spatially Heterogeneous Effects Of The Built Environment On Bike-Sharing Usage During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hongtai Yang, Zishuo Guo, Guocong Zhai, Linchuan Yang, Jinghai Huo

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Bike-sharing holds promise for available and healthy mobility services during COVID-19 where bike sharing users can make trips with lower health concerns due to social distancing compared to the restricted transportation modes such as public transit and ridesharing services. Leveraging the trip data of the Divvy bike-sharing system in Chicago, this study explores spatially heterogeneous effects of built environment on bike-sharing usage under the pandemic. Results show that the average weekly ridership declined by 52.04%. To account for the spatially heterogeneous relationship between the built environment and the ridership, the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model and the semiparametric GWR (S-GWR) …

Analysis Of Shared Micromobility Related Crashes: Case Study Of Florida, Enock E. Mwambeleko

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

United States cities have adopted shared micromobility systems to mitigate problems facing the transportation industry. The State of Florida has at least 13 established shared micromobility systems. Identifying the factors influencing the injury severity is critical for improving the safe operations of micromobility devices. This study investigates the leading factors affecting the injury severity for micromobility related crashes in Florida. The study investigates 463 crashes involving e-scooters or e-bikes between 2018 and 2022 in Florida, extracted by the Text-Mining approach from the SignalFour Analytics database. Analyses consisted of exploratory data analysis to discover trends and patterns. First, using the Pedestrian …

Investigating Changes In Trends Of Traffic Crashes Due To Covid-19 Pandemic In Florida’S Freeways, Ntagwanko Kisabanzira

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak caused a shift in traffic patterns that have in turn influenced a change in traffic accident trends. Due to stay-at-home orders that were issued across the United States, transportation agencies reported low traffic demands on highways after the pandemic outbreak. Low traffic volumes are associated with relatively higher speeds that are linked to increased severity of crashes. Several states reported an increase in fatal crashes after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper evaluates the traffic crash trends on three interstates in Florida (I-10, I-75, and I-95) and sheds light on what happened before, during, …

Crash Injury Severity Prediction With Artificial Neural Networks, Rima Abisaad

Dissertations

Motor vehicle crashes are one of our nation's most serious social, economic and health issues. They are the leading cause of death among children and young adults, killing approximately 1.35 million people each year. Providing a safe and efficient transportation system is the primary goal of transportation engineering and planning. To help reduce traffic fatalities and injuries on roadways, crash prediction models are used to forecast the injury severity of potential crashes and apply precautionary countermeasures accordingly. Most of these models are reactive as they use historical crash data to categorize crash-related factors. Recently, advancements have been made in developing …

Research On High-Rap Mixtures With Rejuvenator - Field Implementation, Nitish R. Bastola, Mahdieh Khedmati, Hamzeh Haghshenas

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The use of Rejuvenating Agents (RAs), as Recycled Asphalt Pavement (RAP) modifiers, has been increasing over the past years. However, the field performance of asphalt mixtures containing high-RAP materials and modified with RAs has raised some concerns regarding the long-term performance of RAs. This study evaluated the laboratory and field performance of high-RAP mixtures with and without bio-oil RA. Three sets of plant-produced specimens were collected: 1) laboratory-compacted; 2) field-compacted and cored after paving; and 3) field-compacted and cored after one and two years. The Hamburg Wheel Tracking (HWT) test was used to evaluate the specimens' resistance to rutting and …

Estimation Of The Service Life Of Span Structures In Predicting The Durability Of Reinforced Concrete Bridges, Sh.B. Akhmedov, Kh. Almenov, Sh.Sh. Shojalilov, Sh.Sh. Safarov

The Scientific Journal of Vehicles and Roads

In recent years, on the roads of Uzbekistan and other countries, there has been a dangerous increase in various damages in the operated superstructures, caused by an increase in the service life and traffic intensity of vehicles and cargo tension.

Indicators Of Determining The Productivity Of Motor Graders Under Natural Conditions, N.R. Aslonov, S.S. Yusubjonov, S.M. Mirkholiqov

The Scientific Journal of Vehicles and Roads

In the article, Motor Graders are self-propelled machines that level and shape the ground, and their equipment consists of a fully rotating blade overturner, located between the rear and front bridges of the pneumatic wheel drive.

Evaluation Of Reliability Indicators Of A Transformer Angular Displacement Transducer, S.F. Amirov, M.S. Yakubov, N.R. Yuldashev

The Scientific Journal of Vehicles and Roads

Based on the analysis of statistical data on the state of transformer angular displacement transducers, the following calculations of probabilistic reliability indicators were performed: failure rate, mean time to failure; the probability of failure-free operation with a sufficiently long operation and gamma-percentage resource; confidence upper and lower bounds are determined, under the chosen conditions of significance, the calculated values ​​satisfy Pearson's χ^2 criterion and therefore do not contradict the experimental data. By analyzing the selected levels of significance, the existence of exponential and normal laws in the laws of probability distribution was revealed.

Warranty And Post-Warranty Service For Vehicles, U.A. Nurullayev, D.M. Zukhurova

The Scientific Journal of Vehicles and Roads

This article examines the characteristics of warranty and post-warranty service, the specifics of the work to identify problems and take into account the prospects of warranty and post-warranty service development, and compares warranty and post-warranty service before and after equipment purchase.

Processing Of The Results Of Comparisons Of Verification Installations Of The Same Level Of Accuracy, A. Abdukayumov

The Scientific Journal of Vehicles and Roads

Methods of processing the results of comparisons of verification installations of the same level of accuracy on the example of frequency and time standards are considered. A comparative analysis of the methods used to compare the verification installations is performed. The conditions for confirming the metrological status (metrological characteristics) of the verification installations are noted. The method of comparison of verification installations of the same level of accuracy is proposed. The results of the study of the pairwise comparison of frequency and time standards, the difference of the arithmetic mean readings, estimates of the total variance, the arithmetic mean readings …

Method Of Determination Of Characteristics Of Crushed Rocks, B.Yе. Kosymbetov

The Scientific Journal of Vehicles and Roads

The article describes the properties of heat resistance and frost resistance of a cone crusher when crushing rocks, and it is established that the transported stones have an abrasive effect on the cone crusher during crushing. Efficiency, of the crushing chamber, the composition of stones in the deposit, the percentage of their correct use of crushing power during construction work. The abrasive wear of the working bodies of the conical crushers was revealed.

Evaluation Of The Efficiency Of Vehicles And Refrigeration Equipment Transporting Perishable Goods, Q.U. Urinbayev

The Scientific Journal of Vehicles and Roads

Today, the volume of exports and imports is growing, and the demand for food is growing as the world's population grows. Further improvement of the rules of transportation of goods by road, as well as improving the safety of transportation of perishable products is a very important issue. One of the vehicles designed to transport perishable goods in road transport is a refrigerator. Selecting the thickness of the panels for the refrigerator compartment of the refrigerator One of the main applications in rigid polyurethane foam is the use of turgon wall wall sandwich panels as a layer of thermal insulation …

Methods For Assessing The Efficiency Of Urban Public Transport, A.A. Nazarov

The Scientific Journal of Vehicles and Roads

The article presents methods for assessing the effectiveness of urban public transport based on the analysis of the operational characteristics of their types. Methods for a comprehensive assessment of options for solving the urban public transport system are analyzed.

Truss Bridge Damage Localization And Severity Estimation Using Influence Lines, Hamoud Alshallaqi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Theses and Dissertations

The safety of bridges is one of the primary concerns of researchers, engineers, and bridge owners and managers, especially when bridges are approaching the end of their intended service lives. The estimation of bridge condition and remaining service life is critical to prioritize the allocation of available funding for repairs and rehabilitation. Various methods, including both dynamic and static approaches, have been developed to detect and localize bridge damage and estimate its severity. This research presents a methodology for detecting a single damaged member in a truss bridge and estimating the severity of the damage using static vertical deflection influence …

Traffic Crash Prediction Using Machine Learning Models, Yifeng Chen

Dissertations and Theses

Traffic crashes account for most of casualties and injuries worldwide, and there has been growing concerns and studies regarding the contributing factors of traffic crashes. There are many factors causing or related to an occurrence of traffic crash, e.g., land use, traffic flow conditions, driver behavior and weather condition. This paper studied the spatial and temporal distribution of crashes on highway and developed real-time prediction models for crash occurrence. Traffic flow data, weather data, and crash data from multiple data sources were collected and processed to develop the model. Multiple machine learning models, such as SVM model and Decision Tree …