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Full-Text Articles in Civil Engineering

Examining Route Diversion And Multiple Ramp Metering Strategies For Reducing Real-Time Crash Risk On Urban Freeways, Vikash Gayah Jan 2006

Examining Route Diversion And Multiple Ramp Metering Strategies For Reducing Real-Time Crash Risk On Urban Freeways, Vikash Gayah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent research at the University of Central Florida addressing crashes on Interstate-4 in Orlando, Florida has led to the creation of new statistical models capable of calculating the crash risk on the freeway (Abdel-Aty et al., 2004; 2005, Pande and Abdel-Aty, 2006). These models yield the rear-end and lane-change crash risk along the freeway in real-time by using static information at various locations along the freeway as well as real-time traffic data that is obtained from the roadway. Because these models use the real-time traffic data, they are capable of calculating the respective crash risk values as the traffic flow …

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Pervious Concrete: A Hydrologic Analysis For Stormwater Management Credit, Joshua Spence Jan 2006

Pervious Concrete: A Hydrologic Analysis For Stormwater Management Credit, Joshua Spence

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Portland Cement pervious concrete's ability to permit water infiltration has encouraged its use as a stormwater management tool. However, the material has suffered historically poor support due to a number of factors, including failures due to poor mix design and improper construction techniques, concern about lesser structural strength, concern about poor long term performance due to clogging of surface pores and undefined credit for stormwater management. This study focuses on long term performances of pervious concrete parking lots and their stormwater management credit. Before stormwater management credit could be estimated, it was necessary to develop a testing device to gather …

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Feasibility Study Of Evaluating Durability Of Cfrp-Strengthened Beams Using In-Situ Load Test, Carlos Turizo-Rico Jan 2006

Feasibility Study Of Evaluating Durability Of Cfrp-Strengthened Beams Using In-Situ Load Test, Carlos Turizo-Rico

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Florida a number of highway bridges were retrofitted on their reinforced concrete (RC) girders with carbon-fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) during the 1990's. Their conditions, after being in service for approximately 10 years, are of significant interest to the State's highway authority, as well as researchers in the region. This paper will evaluate if a load test on one of such bridges, which was retrofitted with CFRP at the girders in the splash-zone and thus was subjected to severe environmental conditions, is a feasible technique to evaluate the actual condition of the CFRP. A 3-dimensional Finite Element Model (FEM) was …

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Change Orders And Productivity Loss Quantification Using Verifiable Site Data, Engy Serag Jan 2006

Change Orders And Productivity Loss Quantification Using Verifiable Site Data, Engy Serag

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Change orders occur frequently in most construction projects, where contract modifications that increase the contract value between 5 to 10% are expected. Changes occur not only because of errors and omissions, but also for other reasons such as scope of work changes, or changes because of unforeseen conditions encountered on the site; a problem which is very common in most heavy construction projects. Changes themselves might not cause productivity losses; in this case the damage calculation will be straightforward. However, changes may cause disruption in unchanged work where the working conditions are impacted, and as a result, lost productivity (inefficiency) …

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Sensitivity Analysis Of Aashto's 2002 Flexible And Rigid Pavement Design Methods, Sanjay Shahji Jan 2006

Sensitivity Analysis Of Aashto's 2002 Flexible And Rigid Pavement Design Methods, Sanjay Shahji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over the years pavement design has been based on empirical equations developed from the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) road tests. The various editions of the AASHTO pavement design guide have served well for several decades; nevertheless many serious limitations existed for their continued use as the nation's primary pavement design procedure. For example, the traffic loads and truck sizes have increased over the years, the AASHTO design equations were derived based on the climatic conditions present at the Road Tests site, and the issue of aging materials was not addressed in the design. To overcome these …

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Variation Of Geotechnical Strength Properties With Age Of Landfills Accepting Biosolids, Kishore Pinapati Jan 2006

Variation Of Geotechnical Strength Properties With Age Of Landfills Accepting Biosolids, Kishore Pinapati

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The solid portion of waste disposal, known as Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) can be landfilled. Landfilling has proved to be a safe, sanitary and economical method of disposal. A by-product from wastewater treatment plants called biosolids is sometimes co-disposed along with MSW in landfills. Recent work at the University of Central Florida has focused on the behavior of the mixture of MSW and biosolids. As an increased amount of waste accumulates in these landfills, it creates a new problem – the geotechnical stability of landfills. In current literature, classical geotechnical testing methods have been followed to find the strength properties …

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A Three-Dimensional Bay/Estuary Model To Simulate Water Quality Transport, Jing Yu Jan 2006

A Three-Dimensional Bay/Estuary Model To Simulate Water Quality Transport, Jing Yu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the development of a numerical water quality model using a general paradigm of reaction-based approaches. In a reaction-based approach, all conceptualized biogeochemical processes are transformed into a reaction network. Through the decomposition of species governing equations via Gauss-Jordan column reduction of the reaction network, (1) redundant fast reactions and irrelevant kinetic reactions are removed from the system, which alleviates the problem of unnecessary and erroneous formulation and parameterization of these reactions, and (2) fast reactions and slow reactions are decoupled, which enables robust numerical integrations. The system of species transport equations is transformed to reaction-extent transport equations, …

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Driving Simulator Validation And Rear-End Crash Risk Analysis At A Signalised Intersection, Praveen Chilakapati Jan 2006

Driving Simulator Validation And Rear-End Crash Risk Analysis At A Signalised Intersection, Praveen Chilakapati

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the use of advanced driving simulators has increased in the transportation engineering field especially in evaluating safety countermeasures. The driving simulator at UCF is a high fidelity simulator with six degrees of freedom. This research aims at validating the simulator in terms of speed and safety with the intention of using it as a test bed for high risk locations and to use it in developing traffic safety countermeasures. The Simulator replicates a real world signalized intersection (Alafaya trail (SR-434) and Colonial Drive (SR-50)). A total of sixty one subjects of age ranging from sixteen to sixty …

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Developing Emergency Preparedness Plans For Orlando International Airport (Mco) Using Microscopic Simulator Watsim, Daniel Dawson Jan 2006

Developing Emergency Preparedness Plans For Orlando International Airport (Mco) Using Microscopic Simulator Watsim, Daniel Dawson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emergency preparedness typically involves the preparation of detailed plans that can be implemented in response to a variety of possible emergencies or disruptions to the transportation system. One shortcoming of past response plans was that they were based on only rudimentary traffic analysis or in many cases none at all. With the advances in traffic simulation during the last decade, it is now possible to model many traffic problems, such as emergency management, signal control and testing of Intelligent Transportation System technologies. These problems are difficult to solve using the traditional tools, which are based on analytical methods. Therefore, emergency …

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Analysis, Modeling, And Simulation Of The Tides In The Loxahatchee River Estuary (Southeastern Florida)., Peter Bacopoulos Jan 2006

Analysis, Modeling, And Simulation Of The Tides In The Loxahatchee River Estuary (Southeastern Florida)., Peter Bacopoulos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent cooperative efforts between the University of Central Florida, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the South Florida Water Management District explore the development of a two-dimensional, depth-integrated tidal model for the Loxahatchee River estuary (Southeastern Florida). Employing a large-domain approach (i.e., the Western North Atlantic Tidal model domain), two-dimensional tidal flows within the Loxahatchee River estuary are reproduced to provide: 1) recommendations for the domain extent of an integrated, surface/groundwater, three-dimensional model; 2) nearshore, harmonically decomposed, tidal elevation boundary conditions. Tidal simulations are performed using a two-dimensional, depth-integrated, finite element-based code for coastal and ocean circulation, ADCIRC-2DDI. Multiple …

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Utilizing A Real Life Data Warehouse To Develop Freeway Travel Time Eliability Stochastic Models, Emam Emam Jan 2006

Utilizing A Real Life Data Warehouse To Develop Freeway Travel Time Eliability Stochastic Models, Emam Emam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the 20th century, transportation programs were focused on the development of the basic infrastructure for the transportation networks. In the 21st century, the focus has shifted to management and operations of these networks. Transportation network reliability measure plays an important role in judging the performance of the transportation system and in evaluating the impact of new Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) deployment. The measurement of transportation network travel time reliability is imperative for providing travelers with accurate route guidance information. It can be applied to generate the shortest path (or alternative paths) connecting the origins and destinations especially under conditions …

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Coordination, Matchmaking, And Resource Allocation For Large-Scale Distributed Systems, Xin Bai Jan 2006

Coordination, Matchmaking, And Resource Allocation For Large-Scale Distributed Systems, Xin Bai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this research, statistical models of airport delay and single flight arrival delay were developed. The models use the Airline On-Time Performance Data from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Surface Airways Weather Data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Multivariate regression, ANOVA, neural networks and logistic regression were used to detect the pattern of airport delay, aircraft arrival delay and schedule performance. These models are then integrated in the form of a system for aircraft delay analysis and airport delay assessment. The assessment of an airport¡¯s schedule performance is discussed. The results of the research show that …

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Hydrologic Mass Balance Of Pervious Concrete Pavement With Sandy Soils, Thomas Kunzen Jan 2006

Hydrologic Mass Balance Of Pervious Concrete Pavement With Sandy Soils, Thomas Kunzen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Use of pervious concrete pavement as a method of stormwater management has shown great promise in previous studies. Reduction in runoff, water quality improvements, and long-term economic benefits are but a few of its many advantages. Regulatory agencies such as the St. Johns River Water Management District require further research into the performance of pervious concrete pavement before granting credits for its use as a best management practice in controlling stormwater. As a part of a larger series of studies by UCF's Stormwater Management Academy, this thesis studies the hydrologic mass balance of pervious concrete pavement in sandy soil common …

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Safety Analyses At Signalized Intersections Considering Spatial, Temporal And Site Correlation, Xuesong Wang Jan 2006

Safety Analyses At Signalized Intersections Considering Spatial, Temporal And Site Correlation, Xuesong Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Statistics show that signalized intersections are among the most dangerous locations of a roadway network. Different approaches including crash frequency and severity models have been used to establish the relationship between crash occurrence and intersection characteristics. In order to model crash occurrence at signalized intersections more efficiently and eventually to better identify the significant factors contributing to crashes, this dissertation investigated the temporal, spatial, and site correlations for total, rear-end, right-angle and left-turn crashes. Using the basic regression model for correlated crash data leads to invalid statistical inference, due to incorrect test statistics and standard errors based on the misspecified …

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Development Of A Simplified Finite Element Approach For Frp Bridge Decks., Jignesh Vyas Jan 2006

Development Of A Simplified Finite Element Approach For Frp Bridge Decks., Jignesh Vyas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Moveable bridges in Florida typically use open steel grid decks due to the weight limitations. However, these decks present rideability, environmental, and maintenance problems, for they are typically less skid resistant than a solid riding surface, create loud noises, and allow debris to fall through the grids. Replacing open steel grid decks that are commonly used in moveable bridges with a low-profile FRP deck can improve rider safety and reduce maintenance costs, while satisfying the strict weight requirement for such bridges. The performance of the new deck system, which includes fatigue and failure tests were performed on full-size panels in …

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Using Augmented Reality For Studying Left Turn Maneuver At Un-Signalized Intersection And Horizontal Visibility Blockage, Ghada Moussa Jan 2006

Using Augmented Reality For Studying Left Turn Maneuver At Un-Signalized Intersection And Horizontal Visibility Blockage, Ghada Moussa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Augmented reality "AR" is a promising paradigm that can provide users with real-time, high-quality visualization of a wide variety of information. In AR, virtual objects are added to the real-world view in a real time. Using the AR technology can offer a very realistic environment for driving enhancement as well as driving performance testing under different scenarios. This can be achieved by adding virtual objects (people, vehicles, hazards, and other objects) to the normal view while driving in a safe controlled environment. In this dissertation, the feasibility of adapting the AR technology into traffic engineering was investigated. Two AR systems; …

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Simulation And Continuance Of Operation For The Use Of Transit (Lynx) To Be Used In Emergency Evacuation Incidents, Noor Elmitiny Jan 2006

Simulation And Continuance Of Operation For The Use Of Transit (Lynx) To Be Used In Emergency Evacuation Incidents, Noor Elmitiny

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The evacuation planning has become an important issue addressed by many research studies and publications aiming to improve the security of the daily life for our public inside the United States of America. The main objective of this research was to address the growing need for evacuation planning using traffic simulation. With increased interests and awareness in emergency evacuation and first responder access to emergencies in public locations (airports, transit stations, ports or stadiums), the traffic simulation can be helpful in orchestrating the traffic flow during emergencies. Related to this issue, Federal Transit Administration has issued a large number of …

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Effects Of Fiber And Lithium On Mechanical Properties Of Concrete Made Fromrecycled Concrete Aggregate, Ashraf Eskander Jan 2006

Effects Of Fiber And Lithium On Mechanical Properties Of Concrete Made Fromrecycled Concrete Aggregate, Ashraf Eskander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The growing demand of construction aggregates has raised concern about the availability of natural aggregates. Over two billion tons of natural aggregate are produced each year in the United States and that number is expected to increase to 2.5 billion tons by 2020. This has raised concern about the availability of natural aggregate. Discarding demolished concrete into landfills is a costly solution from an economical and environmental point of view. Many U.S. highway agencies are re-using Recycled Concrete Aggregates (RCA) as construction material. The use of fiber reinforcement in Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) has recently become a popular option in …

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Safety Effects Of Traffic Signal Installations On State Road Intersections In Northeast Florida, Christopher Ledew Jan 2006

Safety Effects Of Traffic Signal Installations On State Road Intersections In Northeast Florida, Christopher Ledew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how the installations of traffic signals affect crash experience at intersections, to identify those factors which help predict crashes after a signal is installed, and to develop a crash prediction model. It is the intent of this thesis to supplement the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices Signal Warrant procedure and aid the traffic engineer in the signal installation decision making process. Crash data, as well as operational and geometric factors were examined for 32 state road intersections in the northeast Florida area before and after signal installation. Signal warrant studies were …

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Coupling Of Hydrodynamic And Wave Models For Storm Tide Simulations: A Case Study For Hurricane Floyd (1999), Yuji Funakoshi Jan 2006

Coupling Of Hydrodynamic And Wave Models For Storm Tide Simulations: A Case Study For Hurricane Floyd (1999), Yuji Funakoshi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents the development of a two-dimensional St. Johns River model and the coupling of hydrodynamic and wave models for the simulation of storm tides. The hydrodynamic model employed for calculating tides and surges is ADCIRC-2DDI (ADvanced CIRCulation Model for Shelves, Coasts and Estuaries, Two-Dimensional Depth Integrated) developed by Luettich et al. (1992). The finite element based model solves the fully nonlinear shallow water equations in the generalized wave continuity form. Hydrodynamic applications are operated with the following forcings: 1) astronomical tides, 2) inflows from tributaries, 3) meteorological effects (winds and pressure), and 4) waves (wind-induced waves). The wave …

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Developing Microscopic Toll Plaza Model Using Paramics, Nezamuddin Nezamuddin Jan 2006

Developing Microscopic Toll Plaza Model Using Paramics, Nezamuddin Nezamuddin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Simulation modeling is the most cost-effective way of studying real life transportation problems, either existing or anticipated, without disturbing the balance of the transportation system. There is a vast suite of simulation models available in market, ready to choose from macroscopic, mesoscopic, or microscopic in nature, to study different transportation system elements like freeways, highways, signalized and un-signalized intersections. However, most of these network simulation models, like PARAMICS, VISSIM, CORSIM … etc, do not come readily available with built in toll plaza models. On the other hand, many researchers have independently developed toll plaza models, which can only model an isolated …

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Atmospheric Mercury Deposition In An Urban Environment, Mark Fulkerson Jan 2006

Atmospheric Mercury Deposition In An Urban Environment, Mark Fulkerson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Atmospheric mercury deposition, known to be a major source of mercury to aquatic and terrestrial environments, was studied at an urban site in Orlando, FL. Precipitation sampling was conducted from September 2003 to May 2006 at a Mercury Deposition Network site located on the University of Central Florida campus. Weekly rainfall and mercury wet deposition data were gathered from this site, which provided the framework of data for this study. Historical mercury wet deposition data from several sites in Florida were used to develop a regression model to predict mercury deposition at any location in Florida. Stormwater runoff from a …

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Slope Stability Of Laterite Soil Embankments, Ikiensinma Gogo-Abite Jan 2005

Slope Stability Of Laterite Soil Embankments, Ikiensinma Gogo-Abite

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Embankments are key elements in the infrastructural development of structures such as dams, bridges, and roads. Residual soils are generally used as fills in the construction of embankments in areas were residual soils such as laterite is the dominant soil types. Laterite soils have the characteristics of losing its shear strength with time and in fully saturated conditions and its properties varies from region to region. The soil property is influenced by the chemical composition and the environment. The binding agent iron oxide in such soils changes its composition with time and in the presence of moisture. Sudden failures of …

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Attainable Compressive Strength Of Pervious Concrete Paving Systems, Ann Marie Mulligan Jan 2005

Attainable Compressive Strength Of Pervious Concrete Paving Systems, Ann Marie Mulligan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The pervious concrete system and its corresponding strength are as important as its permeability characteristics. The strength of the system not only relies on the compressive strength of the pervious concrete but also on the strength of the soil beneath it for support. Previous studies indicate that pervious concrete has lower compressive strength capabilities than conventional concrete and will only support light traffic loadings. This thesis investigated prior studies on the compressive strength on pervious concrete as it relates to water-cement ratio, aggregate-cement ratio, aggregate size, and compaction and compare those results with results obtained in laboratory experiments conducted on …

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A New Paradigm Of Modeling Watershed Water Quality, Fan Zhang Jan 2005

A New Paradigm Of Modeling Watershed Water Quality, Fan Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Accurate models to reliably predict sediment and chemical transport in watershed water systems enhance the ability of environmental scientists, engineers and decision makers to analyze the impact of contamination problems and to evaluate the efficacy of alternative remediation techniques and management strategies prior to incurring expense in the field. This dissertation presents the conceptual and mathematical development of a general numerical model simulating (1) sediment and reactive chemical transport in river/stream networks of watershed systems; (2) sediment and reactive chemical transport in overland shallow water of watershed systems; and (3) reactive chemical transport in three-dimensional subsurface systems. Through the decomposition …

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Optimization Of An Unstructured Finite Element Mesh For Tide And Storm Surge Modeling Applications In The Western North Atlantic Ocean, Satoshi Kojima Jan 2005

Optimization Of An Unstructured Finite Element Mesh For Tide And Storm Surge Modeling Applications In The Western North Atlantic Ocean, Satoshi Kojima

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, a highly resolved, finite element mesh was developed for the purpose of performing hydrodynamic calculations in the Western North Atlantic Tidal (WNAT) model domain. The WNAT model domain consists of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the entire portion of the North Atlantic Ocean found west of the 60° W meridian. This high resolution mesh (333K) employs 332,582 computational nodes and 647,018 triangular elements to provide approximately 1.0 to 25 km node spacing. In the previous work, the 333K mesh was applied in a Localized Truncation Error Analysis (LTEA) to produce nodal density requirements for the WNAT …

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Benchmark Studies For Structural Health Monitoring Using Analytical And Experimental Models, Jason Lee Burkett Jan 2005

Benchmark Studies For Structural Health Monitoring Using Analytical And Experimental Models, Jason Lee Burkett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The latest bridge inventory report for the United States indicates that 25% of the highway bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. With such a large number of bridges in this condition, safety and serviceability concerns become increasingly relevant along with the associated increase in user costs and delays. Biennial inspections have proven subjective and need to be coupled with standardized non-destructive testing methods to accurately assess a bridge's condition for decision making purposes. Structural health monitoring is typically used to track and evaluate performance, symptoms of operational incidents, anomalies due to deterioration and damage during regular operation as well …

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The Use Of The Ucf Driving Simiulator To Test The Contribution Of Larger Size Vehicles (Lsvs) In Rear-End Collisions And Red Light Running On Intersections., Rami Charles Harb Jan 2005

The Use Of The Ucf Driving Simiulator To Test The Contribution Of Larger Size Vehicles (Lsvs) In Rear-End Collisions And Red Light Running On Intersections., Rami Charles Harb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Driving safety has been an issue of great concern in the United States throughout the years. According to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA), in 2003 alone, there were 6,267,000 crashes in the U.S. from which 1,915,000 were injury crashes, including 38,764 fatal crashes and 43,220 human casualties. The U.S. Department of Transportation spends millions of dollars every year on research that aims to improve roadway safety and decrease the number of traffic collisions. In spring 2002, the Center for Advanced Traffic System Simulation (CATSS), at the University of Central Florida, acquired a sophisticated reconfigurable driving simulator. This …

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Quality Of Service Measures At Signalized Intersections, Kamal Goyal Jan 2005

Quality Of Service Measures At Signalized Intersections, Kamal Goyal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The concept of using qualitative measures to describe the quality of service at signalized intersections provided by different designs and controls has been discussed in numerous conferences. Such measures may include driver's comfort, convenience, anxiety, and preferences. The primary objective of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of using the University of Central Florida's interactive driving simulator to execute several scenarios involving different unusual design and operation practices to measure the quality of service at a signalized intersection. This thesis describes the scenarios, the experiments conducted, the data collected, and analysis of results. Signalized intersections with 3 types of …

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Estimation Of Hybrid Models For Real-Time Crash Risk Assessment On Freeways, Anurag Pande Jan 2005

Estimation Of Hybrid Models For Real-Time Crash Risk Assessment On Freeways, Anurag Pande

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Relevance of reactive traffic management strategies such as freeway incident detection has been diminishing with advancements in mobile phone usage and video surveillance technology. On the other hand, capacity to collect, store, and analyze traffic data from underground loop detectors has witnessed enormous growth in the recent past. These two facts together provide us with motivation as well as the means to shift the focus of freeway traffic management toward proactive strategies that would involve anticipating incidents such as crashes. The primary element of proactive traffic management strategy would be model(s) that can separate 'crash prone' conditions from 'normal' traffic …

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