Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Improved Safety Performance Functions For Signalized Intersections, Karen Dixon, Christopher Monsere, Raul Avelar, Joel Stephen Barnett, Paty Escobar, Sirisha Murthy Kothuri

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

For this effort, the research team developed new safety performance functions (SPFs) for signalized intersections in Oregon. The modeling dataset consisted of 964 crashes from a total of 73 intersections that were randomly selected based on the presence of a traffic signal (identified through the crash data records). The SPFs were developed using a Poissonlognormal Generalized Linear Mixed model framework for total crashes and severe injury crashes (coded as KAB). Three SPFs were developed: 1) an SPF for total crashes, which relies on both major and minor AADTs to predict the expected number of crashes; 2) an SPF for KAB …

A Multivariate Modeling Approach For Generating Ensemble Climatology Forcing For Hydrologic Applications, Sepideh Khajehei

Dissertations and Theses

Reliability and accuracy of the forcing data plays a vital role in the Hydrological Streamflow Prediction. Reliability of the forcing data leads to accurate predictions and ultimately reduction of uncertainty. Currently, Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models are developing ensemble forecasts for various temporal and spatial scales. However, it is proven that the raw products of the NWP models may be biased at the basin scale; unlike model grid scale, depending on the size of the catchment. Due to the large space-time variability of precipitation, bias-correcting the ensemble forecasts has proven to be a challenging task. In recent years, Ensemble Pre-Processing …

Evaluating Global Sensitivity Analysis Methods For Hydrologic Modeling Over The Columbia River Basin, Maysoun Ayad Hameed

Dissertations and Theses

Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) approach helps to identify the effectiveness of model parameters or inputs and thus provides essential information about the model performance. The effects of 14 parameters and one input (forcing data) of the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA) model are analyzed by using two GSA methods: Sobol' and Fourier Amplitude Sensitivity Test (FAST). The simulations are carried out over five sub-basins within the Columbia River Basin (CRB) for three different periods: one-year, four-year, and seven-year. The main parameter sensitivities (first-order) and the interactions sensitivities (second-order) are evaluated in this study. Our results show that some hydrological processes …

A Computational Method To Predict And Study Underwater Noise Due To Pile Driving, Scott Schecklman, Nathan Laws, Lisa M. Zurk, Martin Siderius

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A hybrid modeling approach that uses the parabolic equation (PE) with an empirical source model is presented to study and predict the underwater noise due to pile driving in shallow, inhomogeneous environments over long propagation ranges. The empirical source model uses a phased point source array to simulate the time-dependent pile source. The pile source is coupled with a broadband application of a PE wave propagation model that includes range dependent geoacoustic properties and bathymetry. Simulation results are shown to be in good agreement with several acoustic observations of pile driving in the Columbia River between Portland, OR and Vancouver, …

An Evaluation Of The Neighborhood Traffic Management Program Of Centennial, Colorado, Rolando Gabriel Melgoza

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Residential neighborhoods throughout the United States seek to maintain a quality of life where residents can live free of traffic factors adversely affecting their safety. Many communities have adopted a Neighborhood Traffic Management Program (NTMP) to address concerns over cut-through traffic, speeding, and safety. The City of Centennial, Colorado, incorporated in 2001, is a young city and has its own NTMP. Four traffic mitigation projects have been implemented. The objective of this research is to conduct a before and after comparison study of each Centennial NTMP project, to review the NTMP policies of American cities with similar suburban characteristics to …

Channel Shallowing As Mitigation Of Coastal Flooding, Philip M. Orton, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay, Larry Yin, Alan F. Blumberg, Nickitas Georgas, Haihong Zhao, Hugh J. Roberts, Kytt Macmanus

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Here, we demonstrate that reductions in the depth of inlets or estuary channels can be used to reduce or prevent coastal flooding. A validated hydrodynamic model of Jamaica Bay, New York City (NYC), is used to test nature-based adaptation measures in ameliorating flooding for NYC’s two largest historical coastal flood events. In addition to control runs with modern bathymetry, three altered landscape scenarios are tested: (1) increasing the area of wetlands to their 1879 footprint and bathymetry, but leaving deep shipping channels unaltered; (2) shallowing all areas deeper than 2 m in the bay to be 2 m below Mean …

Toward A Spatial-Temporal Measure Of Land-Use Mix, Steven R. Gehrke, Kelly Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Urban planning and public-health research has long been interested in the connection between land-use mix and travel. Interest from urban planners stems from the potential of transportation efficiency gains achieved by an increased land-use mix and subsequent shortening of trip lengths; whereas, public-health research advocates an increased land-use mix as an effective policy for facilitating greater physical activity. Yet, despite the transportation, land-use, and health benefits related to improving land-use mix and the extent of topical attention given by researchers, no consensus has been reached regarding the magnitude of its effect on travel. This absence of agreement may largely be …

Bridge Seismic Retrofit Measures Considering Subduction Zone Earthquakes, Peter Dusicka, Ramiro Bazaez, Sarah Knoles

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Over the years, earthquakes have exposed the vulnerability of reinforced concrete structures under seismic loads. The recent occurrence of highly devastating earthquakes near instrumented regions, e.g. 2010 Maule, Chile and 2011 Tohoku, Japan, has demonstrated the catastrophic impact of such natural force upon reinforced concrete structures. Research was conducted to investigate the effect of subduction zone earthquakes on structural damage. The study suggests that large magnitude ground motions of long duration have the potential of significantly increasing the number of inelastic excursions and consequently incur more extensive structural damage as compared to ground motions with similar elastic spectral demands but …

On The Assessment Of Reliability In Probabilistic Hydrometeorological Event Forecasting, Caleb Matthew Dechant, Hamid Moradkhani

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Probabilistic forecasts are commonly used to communicate uncertainty in the occurrence of hydrometeorological events. Although probabilistic forecasting is common, conventional methods for assessing the reliability of these forecasts are approximate. Among the most common methods for assessing reliability, the decomposed Brier Score and Reliability Diagram treat an observed string of events as samples from multiple Binomial distributions, but this is an approximation of the forecast reliability, leading to unnecessary loss of information. This article suggests testing the hypothesis of reliability via the Poisson-Binomial distribution, which is a generalized solution to the Binomial distribution, providing a more accurate model of the …

Seismic Retrofit Benefit Considering Statewide Transportation Assessment, Selamawit Tesfayesus Mehary, Peter Dusicka

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this study was to identify and demonstrate a methodology to prioritize bridges for retrofit in the State of Oregon. Given the limited resources available, retrofitting all vulnerable bridges in the foreseeable future would not be practical. Instead, a retrofit strategy needs to be developed to prioritize the inventory and enumerate the retrofit cost. In this study, a prioritization methodology used a holistic assessment of overall roadway system to consider highway route segments, rather than individual bridges. The overall assessment was based on a cost-benefit analysis including retrofit cost, expected economic loss (with or without retrofit) and social …

Experimental Investigation Of Fiber Reinforced Concrete Beams, Karrar Ali Al-Lami

Dissertations and Theses

Shear strength of fiber reinforced concrete beams was studied in this research project. Three types of fibers were examined: hooked-end steel fiber, crimped-steel fiber, and crimped-monofilament polypropylene fibers. The experimental program included five beam specimens. Two of the beams were control specimens in which one was reinforced with minimum shear reinforcement according to ACI 318, while the other one did not have any shear reinforcement. Each one of the other three specimens was reinforced with one of the above mentioned fibers by 1% volumetric ratio. In addition to the beam specimens, three prisms were also made for each type fiber …

Climate Change Assessment In Columbia River Basin (Crb) Using Copula Based On Coupling Of Temperature And Precipitation, Yueyue Qin

Dissertations and Theses

The multi downscaled-scenario products allow us to better assess the uncertainty of the variations of precipitation and temperature in the current and future periods. Joint Probability distribution functions (PDFs), of both the climatic variables, might help better understand the interdependence of the two, and thus in-turn help in accessing the future with confidence. In the present study, we have used multi-modelled statistically downscaled ensemble of precipitation and temperature variables. The dataset used is multi-model ensemble of 10 Global Climate Models (GCMs) downscaled product from CMIP5 daily dataset, using the Bias Correction and Spatial Downscaling (BCSD) technique, generated at Portland State …

Behavior Of Reinforced Concrete Beams Retrofitted In Flexure Using Cfrp-Nsm Technique, Salam Al-Obaidi

Dissertations and Theses

A variety of retrofitting methods are used to upgrade existing structures. For example, steel plates and Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) jackets are externally bonded to members to increase their capacity in flexure and shear. However, due to the issue of corrosion these strengthening systems may lose their efficiency with time. FRP materials have been used to strengthen many structural components of different shapes and types. FRP jackets, FRP Strips, and FRP rods have commonly been used to rehabilitate existing structural components. The many advantages of using FRP as strengthening materials have made this material an attractive alternative: advantages such as …

River-Tide Dynamics: Exploration Of Nonstationary And Nonlinear Tidal Behavior In The Yangtze River Estuary, Leicheng Guo, Mick Van Der Wegen, David A. Jay, Pascal Matte, Zheng Bing Wang, Dano Roelvink, Qing He

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

River-tide dynamics remain poorly understood, in part because conventional harmonic analysis (HA) does not cope effectively with nonstationary signals. To explore nonstationary behavior of river tides and the modulation effects of river discharge, this work analyzes tidal signals in the Yangtze River estuary using both HA in a nonstationary mode and continuous wavelet transforms (CWT). The Yangtze is an excellent natural laboratory to analyze river tides because of its high and variable flow, its length, and the fact that there are do dams or reflecting barriers within the tidal part of the system. Analysis of tidal frequencies by CWT and …

Evaluating The Effects Of A Congestion And Weather Responsive Advisory Variable Speed Limit System In Portland, Oregon, Matthew Blake Downey

Dissertations and Theses

Safety and congestion are ever present and increasingly severe transportation problems in urban areas throughout the nation and world. These phenomena can have wide-ranging consequences relating to safety, the economy, and the environment. Adverse weather conditions represent another significant challenge to safety and mobility on highways. Oregon is not immune from either of these global issues. Oregon Route (OR) 217, to the southwest of the downtown Portland, is one of the worst freeways for congestion in the state and is also subject to the Pacific Northwest's frequently inclement and unpredictable climate. High crash rates, severe recurrent bottlenecks and highly unreliable …

Development Of A Pedestrian Demand Estimation Tool: A Destination Choice Model, Christopher D. Muhs, Kelly Clifton, Patrick Allen Singleton, Robert J. Schneider

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

There is growing support for improvements to the quality of the walking environment, including more investments to promote pedestrian travel. Planners, engineers, and others seek improved tools to estimate pedestrian demand that are sensitive to environmental and demographic factors at the appropriate scale in order to aid policy-relevant issues like air quality, public health, and smart allocation of infrastructure and other resources. Further, in the travel demand forecasting realm, tools of this kind are difficult to implement due to the use of spatial scales of analysis that are oriented towards motorized modes, vast data requirements, and computer processing limitations.

To …

Lighten Everyone's Load: Lidar Applications To Support Engineers, Planners, Scientists And More, Michael J. Olsen

PSU Transportation Seminars

Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology is reshaping the civil engineering profession and offers many unique advantages. National efforts such as the 3D Elevation Plan (3DEP) are helping increase the availability of LIDAR data. LIDAR is one of the crucial technologies that is transitioning the world of civil and construction engineering from 2D paper-based design to 3D digital design. The high spatial resolution and accuracy capabilities of LIDAR have led to increased efficiencies, improved analyses, and more informed decision making.

A further advantage of this dataset is that multiple people can use the same dataset for a variety …

Hiding Private Locations By Anonymizing Data, Kelly J. Clifton, Steven R. Gehrke

TREC Project Briefs

Researchers explore ways of masking private locations in the interest of making useful data publicly available.

Webinar: Impacts Of Roadway And Traffic Characteristics On Air Pollution Risks For Bicyclists, Alexander Y. Bigazzi

TREC Webinar Series

Active travel such as walking and bicycling can lead to health benefits through an increase in physical activity. At the same time, more active travelers breath more and so can experience high pollution inhalation rates during travel. This webinar will review the state of knowledge about how roadway and traffic characteristics impact air pollution risks for bicyclists, including the latest PSU research quantifying bicyclists' uptake of traffic-related air pollution using on-road measurements in Portland. The PSU research team including Alex Bigazzi, Jim Pankow, and Miguel Figliozzi quantified bicyclist exposure concentrations on different types of roadways, respiration responses to exertion level, …

Container Houses, Tran Joseph, Anissa Rosbaugh, Sydne Scott, Hanan Yassin

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

We have noticed that there is an increasing number of homeless in our community. People who are homeless have a more difficult time getting jobs, making it harder to for them to get back on their feet.

Homeless is defined as a person without a stable place to live, in risk of being homeless. Homeless under Federal status, is defined as fleeing/attempting to escape domestic violence. Examples of homelessness include couch surfing, sleeping in shelters, and living in a car.

Our proposal was to build homeless shelters out of shipping containers.

F.I.S.H. (Finding Information About Safety And Health), Ben Makuch, Edward Szczepansk, Sasha Leamy, Connor Walker, Himanshu Nagpal, Harriet Adkins, Elle Sandifer

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

People with cell phones often take it for granted how much knowledge is at their fingertips. Many people without cell phones don’t have easy instant access to the information that others do, leaving them in the dark. This kiosk would aid the homeless community, tourists, and people whose cell phones are not working. This is often overlooked by middle and upper class people, who have cell phones ingrained as a way of life.

People that do not have access to information miss out on opportunities to better their situation. There are many resources such as educational, medical, and professional tools. …

Vélo-Ck, Anna Blakley, Jonathan Cordisco, Jonathan Huang, Justin Huang, Emma Perlman, Ruhika Prasad, Siddarth Suri, Will Swindell

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Portland is known as Bike City U.S.A for its promotion of a eco friendly method of transportation and support of biking infrastructure. Although our city has this progressive reputation, there is a negative aspect of a bike-loving city that has not received attention. The Oregon Household Activity survey in 2011 states that “about 29 percent of adults in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties own a bike”. As more people has decided to commute with bikes, theft has increased dramatically. According to the Portland Police Bureau, “Portland thieves last year took more than 2,100 bikes worth well over $1 million combined”. …

Cleaning Up The Cities Of Tomorrow, Miguel Campos, Jack Chen, Alex Gaiovych, Fernando Lauer, Kaleb Swoverland, Anna Velikoretskikh, Jason Yu

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

A huge problem with current modernized and non modernized cities is the amount of trash being thrown away. There is a tremendous amount of recyclable material that is being thrown away with non recyclable waste into massive landfills. Even though we can not physically see the trash that we throw away on the street, it must still go somewhere. Some of that waste is toxic, other waste is made of non decomposable material. These massive waste disposal sites hurt animals, damage soil, and harm the health people living nearby.

In 2007, Americans threw out about 570 billion pounds of municipal …

Osmosis Alive – Algae Water Filtration System, Adrik Gurganus, Htet Htet Soe, Jonathan Baird, Liam Beckett, Nick Vautravers, Parker Swensen, Tucker Johnson

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Goals: Our goals of this project was to:

• Obtain an energy efficient, self-sufficient system to help reduce waste and money, and reuse and recycle water. To have a successful, natural, and more self-sufficient filtration system, using algae.
• To use algae and other plants as an efficient way to filter water.
• To create a water filtration system that is organic and would have 0 waste.
• To use the water in the best and most efficient way possible, and to reduce energy and coal/oil consumption (water turbine)
• To make our community cleaner and greener, and reduce carbon footprint, pollution, and environmental impact. …

Smarter Cycling, Cory Koehler, Richard Smith, Sarah St. Clair, Alex Taylor, Aubrey Masten, Konon Phillips

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

With the current trend of urbanization, the populations of major cities such as Portland are steadily increasing. This is causing a variety of problems, both within the city and in rural areas. In regards to the city, the major challenges facing city planners are the need for the expansion of residential neighborhoods and a rise in traffic throughout the city. One way to tackle the issue of an abundance of traffic, is to make alternate means of transportation more appealing to residents. We chose to focus on bicycling because of the bike‐friendly culture already in place in Portland. An increase …

Cleaner Drain, Jonah Paivarinta, Daniel Ortiz‐Rojo, Masson Klepp, Rebekah Likestoskat, Macy Chadney, Jeremy Ferrando

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Water in streets causes several issues, both to our infrastructure and our emotions. The water can harm property by rotting wooden structures. If the water is high enough, it can even stall cars and flood into buildings.

Being forced to walk through or around a puddle can hurt someone's emotional state, which reduces productivity and this affect people around them.

It costs about 30 dollars to clean a drain, and there are about 15 thousand drains, which totals to to around$450,000 and if you add in other costs such as employees and street sweeping for a cleaning company it costs …

Optimizing Efficiency Of Street Lights, Elias Taylor, Graciela Quinto, Peter Ataras, Shareace Miller, Jesus Montes, Dylan Penston, Olivia Carter

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

A significant amount of energy is lost in the transportation and transformation of electricity from its source location to the street lights due to the imperfect systems. Whole constellations have disappeared because of light pollution.

Aerosol Optical Hygroscopicity Measurements During The 2010 Cares Campaign, Dean B. Atkinson, James Gregory Radney, Janel Lum, Katheryn R. Kolesar, Daniel J. Cziczo, Mikhail Pekour, Qi Zhang, Ari Setyan, Alla Zelenyuk, Christopher D. Cappa

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Measurements of the effect of water uptake on particulate light extinction or scattering made at two locations during the 2010 CARES study around Sacramento, CA are reported. The observed influence of water uptake, characterized through the dimensionless optical hygroscopicity parameter γ, is compared with calculations constrained by observed particle size distributions and size-dependent particle composition. A closure assessment has been carried out that allowed for determination of the average hygroscopic growth factors (GF) at 85% relative humidity and the dimensionless hygroscopicity parameter κ for oxygenated organic aerosol (OA) and for supermicron particles, yielding κ = 0.1–0.15 and 0.9–1.0, respectively. The …

Bicyclist Compliance At Signalized Intersections, Samson Ray Riley Thompson

Dissertations and Theses

This project examined cyclist red light running behavior using two data sets. Previous studies of cyclist compliance have investigated the tendencies of cyclists to run red lights on the whole by generalizing different maneuvers to their end outcome, running a red light. This project differentiates between the different types of red light running and focuses on the most egregious case, gap acceptance, which is when a cyclist runs a red light by accepting a gap in opposing traffic.

Using video data, a mathematical model of cyclist red light running was developed for gap acceptance. Similar to other studies, this analysis …

Long-Term Metal Retention Performance Of Media Filter Drains For Stormwater Management, Agathe Thomas, Liv Haselbach, Cara Poor, Maxwell Freimund

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Stormwater runoff, a substantial source of nonpoint pollution, can be treated using Best Management Practices (BMPs), such as the Media Filter Drain (MFD). An MFD is a trench filled with an engineered media mix, usually with a grass overlay, that receives runoff from the paved roadway next to it. The MFD was shown to remove dissolved metals (zinc and copper), typical pollutants from vehicles and urban areas, which might negatively impact aquatic species in receiving waters, but its long-term effectiveness was not known. Existing media filter mixes of different ages were collected from two different sites in the Pacific Northwest …