Engineering Commons^™

Assessing Past Airworthiness Directives And How Safety Management Systems May Benefit Aviation Product Design And Manufacturing, Damon Lercel, Manoj Patankar, Richard Steckel

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) continues to promulgate Safety Management Systems (SMS) across aviation organizations when it recently issued SMS requirements for EASA certificated Part 145 maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) organizations and Part 21 Design & Manufacturing (D&M) organizations. Currently, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has no such rule in place for these U.S.-based organizations, which may challenge those doing business in countries where EASA policies apply. Given that a majority of the United States’ D&M and MRO population is made up of smaller organizations, it is likely a U.S. SMS regulation will require justification of the …

Automated Flood Depth Estimation On Roadways, Kwame Ampofo, Megan A. Witherow, Alex Glandon, Monibor Rahman, Ahmed Temtam, Mecit Cetin, Khan M. Iftekharuddin

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Recurrent nuisance flooding is common across many parts of the globe and causes extensive challenges for drivers on the roadways. The prevailing monitoring methods for roadway flooding are costly and not automated or effective. The ubiquity of visual data from cameras and advancements in computing such as deep learning may offer cost-effective methods for automated flood depth estimation on roadways based on reference objects such as cars. However, flood depth estimation faces challenges due to the limited amount of data annotated with water levels and diverse scenes showing reference objects at various scales and perspectives. This study proposes a novel …

Smart Roadside Safety Vest, Nicholas Huttinger, Emily Stapleton, Susannah Smith

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of this project is to design a vest to be worn by pedestrians and cyclists, or anyone who may be working near traffic. This vest will utilize an LED display on the back of the vest to increase the visibility of the wearer and convey information to nearby drivers. The vest will also be able to detect and alert the wearer to approaching vehicles. If it is detected that the wearer has been involved in an accident, the vest will send a message to the wearer’s designated emergency contact(s), which will include the GPS coordinates of the wearer …

Identifying Wrong-Way Driving Entry Points On Interstate Highways Using Land-Use Impact Assessment And 911 Calls, Farman Mia, Samer Dessouky

Publications

The research aims to provide insight into the initiation event of Wrong-way Driving (WWD) on highways. The intense severity of a WWD accident is encouraging the authorities to install mitigation systems that will ensure safety for motorists on highways. The WWD events are mostly resulting of intoxicated driving, where the unconscious driver takes the wrong way to enter the highway and place other motorists into life-threatening danger. This research attempted to explore from basic knowledge of WWD occurrence to examine the origin and driving philosophy of intoxicated drivers from land-use impact and mathematical modeling point of views. To identify the …

Development Of A Web Application For Traffic Accident Mapping And Analysis, Susan Bogus Halter, Su Zhang, Arian Golrokh Amin

Publications

It is widely accepted that road traffic safety is a significant public health issue. One of the effective ways to improve road traffic safety is analyzing crash data to understand where traffic accidents occur, identify associated spatial and temporal patterns, and determine causation. In the State of New Mexico, locations of traffic accidents are currently visualized using a variety of static maps. Although these statics maps are easier to create and producers can control how users view the data, users cannot customize these maps to meet their special needs. That being said, new maps need to be created for any …

Current States , Prediction And Prevention Suggestions For Water Hazard Accidents In China’S Coal Mines, Sun Wenjie, Li Wenjie, Ning Dianyan, Ren Lingfeng

Coal Geology & Exploration

At present, the pattern of coal resource development in China has changed, but the water hazard accidents that restrict the safety production of coal mine still occur from time to time. In order to explore the characteristics and laws of water hazard accidents in coal mines in China and scientifically study and judge the evolution trend of water hazard accidents, study was performed in terms of the year, region, accident level and influencing factors of water hazard accidents, with the nationwide water hazard accidents from 2001 to 2022 as the statistical objects. Meanwhile, the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model was …

Application Of Machine Learning Models To Predict Driver Left Turn Destination Lane Choice Behavior At Urban Intersections, Mohammed Moinuddin, Logan Proffer, Matthew Vechione, Aaditya Khanal

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

When there are multiple lanes to choose from downstream of a turning movement, drivers should choose the innermost lane so that drivers at other approaches of the intersection may make concurrent turning movements in the outermost lane(s). However, human drivers do not always choose the innermost lane, which could lead to crashes with other vehicles. Therefore, predicting human driver behaviors is vital in reducing crashes, as the need to share the roadways with automated vehicles (AVs) continues to grow. In this research, various machine learning models have been used to predict the left turn destination lane choice of human-driven vehicles …

Dam Failure And Incident Investigations, Nathaniel Gee

Theses and Dissertations

There are multiple dam failures and dam safety incidents every year in the United States. There are currently no standard policy requirements for when or how to conduct failure or incident investigations. This paper first reviews one of the most significant failures in US history, the failure of Buffalo Creek Dam No. 3 in order to explore the impacts of one significant failure on dam safety policy in the US. The paper then explores the currents state of the industry by reviewing 58 different dam failure or incident investigation reports based on incidents that occurred in the United States from …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of Nuclear Security Training And Education In Ghana, Michael Nii Sanka Ansah, Boris Stepanov Pavlovich, Paul Atta Amoah, David Okoh Kpeglo, Simon Adu, Bright Kwame Afornu

International Journal of Nuclear Security

Growing attention is being given to nuclear power across several African countries, including in Ghana. The world is depending on nuclear energy as a reliable and efficient means of energy generation. Ghana as a country is developing nuclear energy; thus, equal attention must be directed toward nuclear safety and security. Ghana is gradually developing interest in and is devoting substantial required resources to educating and training on nuclear security to meet the standards required by international bodies. Institutions such as the Nuclear Safety and Security Centre and the School of Nuclear and Allied Sciences of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission …

Hardware In The Loop Test Stand For Battery Management System Validation In Shipboard Controls, Cole Dawson Tschritter

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

ABSTRACT: Traditionally, large-scale power systems have relied on power generation always exceeding the total load demand. Though this is most often the case, there are rare occurrences where failures in the generation, distribution, or even planning, that have led to situations where load demand quickly surpasses the generation capacity. In such cases, uncontrolled shedding of loads occurs, leading to brownouts or blackouts that can have catastrophic impact to both people and property. Advanced architectures, such as microgrids, offer a variety of improvements that are aimed at mitigating or even preventing these failures. Improvements include distributed power generation, active source and …

Digital Challenges And Opportunities Of Addressing On-Site Productivity And Safety On Construction Job Sites: An International Perspective, Ahmed Hassan, Ankur Mitra, Mark Mulville, Alan Hore

Conference papers

The slow pace of digital transformation in construction remains an impediment to the industry’s evolution. Despite rapid developments in digital technologies, the vast bulk of data generated on construction job sites remains underutilised due to the limited use of real-time data capture. The diffusion of digital solutions in construction depends on successfully capturing critical real-time data that can inform and contribute to more productive work patterns and safer job sites. Nevertheless, the construction industry’s fragmented nature has segregated the digital solutions offered by technology providers from the volatile challenges facing on-site construction practitioners.

This paper will present the early development …

Investigating Disparities And Safety Equity In Pedestrian Nighttime Crashes In Michigan, Sia Isaria Mwende

Masters Theses

For the past eleven years (2011 - 2021) in Michigan, 76 percent of all fatal pedestrian crashes occurred at night. Over the same period, about 36 percent of pedestrian nighttime crashes were fatal or incapacitating (KA), while only 25 percent of daytime pedestrian crashes were fatal or incapacitating (KA). Previous studies suggest that, overall, poor neighborhoods and racial minorities are associated with more pedestrian crashes. With more fatal and incapacitating pedestrian crashes occurring at night, it is imperative to examine how these crashes are distributed by economic status and racial makeup. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the racial and …

Safety First Means Safety Fits- An Awareness Campaign For Inclusive Ppe Designed For Women, Reagan Kellen Tonda

Construction Management

The construction industry has long overlooked the unique needs of women in terms of personal protective equipment (PPE), leading to discomfort and safety risks. This paper presents the "Safety First Means Safety Fits" social media awareness campaign, which aims to increase awareness about the importance of size-inclusive PPE for women and the progress being made in the industry. The campaign utilized social media, specifically Instagram, as a platform for dialogue and information distribution. The campaign involved the creation of an Instagram account (@safetyfits_CP) and the development of six posts addressing various aspects of women's PPE. The posts were promoted through …

Development Of Underground Utility Construction Course Curricula For The Granite Heavy Civil Minor, Jared T. Schlenker

Construction Management

This paper discusses the introduction of a new course into the Granite Heavy Civil Minor (GHCM) curriculum. This course revolves around underground utility construction and is designed to provide students with knowledge that neither the Construction Management nor Civil Engineering Departments provide. The additional curricula are comprised of underground construction safety, materials, and construction methods that will provide GHCM students with a competitive advantage when applying for jobs in heavy civil construction, further incentivizing the minor program. This senior project utilizes PowerPoint presentations that can either comprise an entire course or be added to existing courses as supplemental information

Inventory, Operations, And Safety At Free Right-Turn Ramps, Aemal Khattak, Jonathon Camezind, Mm Shakui Haque

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

This research focused on traffic safety and operational performance of rural, minor approach stop-controlled intersections with free right-turn (FRT) ramps. The objectives of the research were to:

• Create a statewide inventory of rural FRT ramp intersections and provide to the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT),
• Using NDOT 10-year crash data, conduct statistical safety analysis of rural FRT intersections extending ¼-mile in each direction from the intersection,
• Study vehicular operations at rural intersections with and without FRT ramps including a comparison of vehicular conflicts, and
• Develop guidelines for operations and safety tradeoffs to assist with NDOT projects on maintaining similar locations, …

Personal Protective Equipment Usage And Injury Type, Nathan Giannini

Construction Management

Workers in the construction industry have many injuries both minor and life-altering. The industry suffers from injuries of all kinds such as falls, electrocution, and being struck by flying objects. To protect against this, workers wear certain types of personal protective equipment (PPE) on construction sites as a last line of defense. The equipment available such as hard hats, safety glasses, gloves, respirators, and hearing protection either protects against acute injuries (those that occur instantly) or chronic injuries (those that occur over time). This study investigates whether the type of injury that PPE protects against, acute or chronic, affects the …

The Impact Of Albuquerque’S Bus Rapid Transit System On Pedestrian Safety, Martina Mercure

Civil Engineering ETDs

This project will explore the impacts of several traffic safety countermeasures and roadway design changes on pedestrian safety along the Central Avenue corridor of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The motivation behind this research is the communities concern for the increase in pedestrian fatalities in the US and specifically New Mexico. The research will have a specific focus on pedestrian safety, but we will also address traffic safety outcomes for motor vehicle users and bicyclists. The City of Albuquerque has taken note of the traffic safety issues on Central Avenue and has implemented or is in the process of implementing several countermeasures …

Enhancing Pedestrian-Autonomous Vehicle Safety In Low Visibility Scenarios: A Comprehensive Simulation Method, Zizheng Yan, Yang Liu, Hong Yang

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

Self-driving cars raise safety concerns, particularly regarding pedestrian interactions. Current research lacks a systematic understanding of these interactions in diverse scenarios. Autonomous Vehicle (AV) performance can vary due to perception accuracy, algorithm reliability, and environmental dynamics. This study examines AV-pedestrian safety issues, focusing on low visibility conditions, using a co-simulation framework combining virtual reality and an autonomous driving simulator. 40 experiments were conducted, extracting surrogate safety measures (SSMs) from AV and pedestrian trajectories. The results indicate that low visibility can impair AV performance, increasing conflict risks for pedestrians. AV algorithms may require further enhancements and validations for consistent safety performance …

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Operator Workload And Situation Awareness Utilizing First Person View Techniques, Ross Lucas Stephenson Jr

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The small, unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) sector within the aviation industry is experiencing unprecedented growth. However, the regulatory guidance for the safe integration of sUAS into the National Airspace System (NAS) has not kept pace with this technological growth within the market. Current regulatory limitations of line-of-sight operations may have an impact on the establishment of an equivalent level of safety for sUAS operations as maintained by manned aircraft. The focal point of the discussion of line-of-sight operations has been the ability of the sUAS pilot to see and avoid all obstacles and other aircraft in a safe and timely …

Neural Network Fusion Of Multi-Modal Sensor Data For Autonomous Surface Vessels, David J. Thompson

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Autonomous surface vessels (ASV) can potentially improve the safety of vessels traditionally operated by humans. Despite advancements in autonomous on-road vehicles, many of these advancements have yet to be realized for ASVs. This is primarily due to lacking ASV sensing platforms and public datasets for ASV-based perception research. To that end, this dissertation demonstrates the design of a synchronized multi-modal sensing platform for ASVs utilizing GPS/INS, LiDAR, LWIR cameras, HDR camera, and high-resolution cameras. The sensing platform is designed to maximize the overlap of sensors for multi-modal research and provides accurate intrinsic and extrinsic calibration between each sensor. Furthermore, the …

The Perceptions And Effects Of Nutrition On Worker Health And Productivity In Construction, Matthew Scott Howell

Construction Management

Construction workers often have poor dietary habits due to poor nutrition education, lack of nutritious food options, and social stigma. These habits often lead to health problems like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease which can decrease productivity and put workers at risk of on-site injury. This preliminary study examines how nutrition impacts worker safety and productivity. A survey was distributed to six students involved in construction work for Cal Poly’s Residential Construction course. This survey identified their eating habits and inhibitors for healthy eating. Two meals, one with high nutritional value and one with low nutritional value, were given to …

Proposal For And Validation Of Novel Risk-Based Process To Reduce The Risk Of Construction Site Fatalities (Major Accident Prevention (Map) Program), Roberta Selleck, Marcus Cattani, Maureen Hassall

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Despite developments in the prevention of fatalities in the construction industry, fatalities resulting from well-known hazards continue at an unacceptable rate. Construction fatality prevention literature describes risk management techniques to provide ‘early warning’ of potential events. In dynamic construction project environments, these ‘early warnings’ are missed resulting in serious and fatal events. Critical Control Risk Management (CCRM) provides an alternative strategy to prevent fatal events in the construction industry. However, no research exists that explores the application of CCRM to actual construction projects. This study aims to design, develop, and validate a construction fatality prevention program using CCRM principles through …

Dsrc Versus Lte-V2x: Empirical Performance Analysis Of Direct Vehicular Communication Technologies, Ehsan Moradi-Pari, Danyang Tian, Mojtaba Bahramgiri, Samer Rajab, Sue Bai

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication systems have an eminence potential to improve road safety and optimize traffic flow by broadcasting Basic Safety Messages (BSMs). Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) and LTE Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) are two candidate technologies to enable V2V communication. DSRC relies on the IEEE 802.11p standard for its PHY and MAC layer while LTE-V2X is based on 3GPP’s Release 14 and operates in a distributed manner in the absence of cellular infrastructure. There has been considerable debate over the relative advantages and disadvantages of DSRC and LTE-V2X, aiming to answer the fundamental question of which technology is most effective in real-world …

Development Of A Safety Performance Decision-Making Tool For Flight Training Organizations, Marisa D. Aguiar Phd, Carolina L. Anderson Phd

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

The purpose of the research was to create and validate a safety performance decision-making tool to transform a reactive safety model into a predictive, decision-making tool, specific to large, collegiate Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 141 flight training organizations, to increase safety and aid in operational decision-making. Using Monte Carlo simulation, the study conducted simulation runs based on true operational ranges to simulate the operating conditions possible within large, collegiate CFR Part 141 flight training organizations with varying levels of controllable resources in terms of personnel (Aviation Maintenance Technicians and Instructor Pilots) and expenditures (active …

2022-2023 Annual Security And Fire Report - Sayre Campus, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

ANNUAL SECURITY & FIRE REPORTS

This is the 2022-2023 Annual Security and Fire Report of the Sayre Campus by Southwestern Oklahoma State University.

2022-2023 Annual Security And Fire Report - Weatherford Campus, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

ANNUAL SECURITY & FIRE REPORTS

This is the 2022-2023 Annual Security and Fire Report of the Weatherford Campus by Southwestern Oklahoma State University.

Continual Reinforcement Learning Formulation For Zero-Sum Game-Based Constrained Optimal Tracking, Behzad Farzanegan, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study provides a novel reinforcement learning-based optimal tracking control of partially uncertain nonlinear discrete-time (DT) systems with state constraints using zero-sum game (ZSG) formulation. To address optimal tracking, a novel augmented system consisting of tracking error and its integral value, along with an uncertain desired trajectory, is constructed. A barrier function (BF) with a tradeoff factor is incorporated into the cost function to keep the state trajectories to remain within a compact set and to balance safety with optimality. Next, by using the modified value functional, the ZSG formulation is introduced wherein an actor–critic neural network (NN) framework is …

An Eye Tracking Based Framework For Safety Improvement Of Offshore Operations, Muhammad A. Raza, Raj Kiran, Saima Ghazal, Ziho Kang, Saeed Salehi, Edward Cokely, Jiwon Jeon

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Offshore drilling operations consist of complex and high-risk processes. Lack of situational awareness in drilling operations has become an important human factor issue that causes safety accidents. Prolonged work shifts and fatigue are some of the crucial issues that impact performance. Eye tracking technology can be used to distinguish the degree of awareness or alertness of participants that might be related to fatigue or onsite distractions. Oculomotor activity can be used to obtain visual cues that can quantify the drilling operators' situational awareness that might enable us to develop warning alarms to alert the driller. Such systems can help reduce …

Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Exploratory Cyber-Physical Safety Analyzer Framework For Civilian Urban Air Mobility, Md. Shirajum Munir, Sumit Howlader Dipro, Kamrul Hasan, Tariqul Islam, Sachin Shetty

VMASC Publications

Urban air mobility (UAM) has become a potential candidate for civilization for serving smart citizens, such as through delivery, surveillance, and air taxis. However, safety concerns have grown since commercial UAM uses a publicly available communication infrastructure that enhances the risk of jamming and spoofing attacks to steal or crash crafts in UAM. To protect commercial UAM from cyberattacks and theft, this work proposes an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled exploratory cyber-physical safety analyzer framework. The proposed framework devises supervised learning-based AI schemes such as decision tree, random forests, logistic regression, K-nearest neighbors (KNN), and long short-term memory (LSTM) for predicting and …

Optimizing Human Performance To Enhance Safety: A Case Study In An Automotive Plant, Maria Chiara Leva, Michaela Demichela, Carlos Albarran Morillo, Franco Modaffari, Lorenzo Comberti

Articles

Human factors play a relevant role in the dynamic work environments of the manufacturing sector in terms of production efficiency, safety, and sustainable performance. This is particularly relevant in assembly lines where humans are widely employed alongside automated and robotic agents. In this situation, operators’ ability to adapt to different levels of task complexity and variability in each workstation has a strong impact on the safety, reliability, and efficiency of the overall production process. This paper presents an application of a theoretical and empirical method used to assess the matching of different workers to various workstations based on a quantified …