Transportation Engineering Commons^™

Detecting And Tracking Vulnerable Road Users' Trajectories Using Different Types Of Sensors Fusion, Zhongchuan Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Vulnerable road user (VRU) detection and tracking has been a key challenge in transportation research. Different types of sensors such as the camera, LiDAR, and inertial measurement units (IMUs) have been used for this purpose. For detection and tracking with the camera, it is necessary to perform calibration to obtain correct GPS trajectories. This method is often tedious and necessitates accurate ground truth data. Moreover, if the camera performs any pan-tilt-zoom function, it is usually necessary to recalibrate the camera. In this thesis, we propose camera calibration using an auxiliary sensor: ultra-wideband (UWB). USBs are capable of tracking a road …

Machine Learning Algorithms For Forecasting The Impacts Of Connected And Automated Vehicles On Highway Construction Costs, Amirsaman Mahdavian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

A multitude of externalities affects transport efficiency and numbers of trips. Population expansion, urban development, political issues, fiscal trends, and growth in the field of connected, automated, shared, and electric (CASE) vehicles have all played prominent roles. While the market is keenly aware of the upcoming shift to the CASE vehicles, the transformation itself is reliant upon the development of technologies, customer outlook, and guidelines. The purpose of this research is to establish an overview of the possible network design problems, as well as potential consequences to vehicle automation systems by employing machine learning and system dynamics analysis. Finally, the …

A Spatiotemporal Evaluation Of Freeway Traffic Demand In Florida During Covid-19 Pandemic, Md Istiak Jahan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis contributes to our understanding of the changes in traffic volumes on major roadway facilities in Florida due to COVID-19 pandemic from a spatiotemporal perspective. Three different models were tested in this study- a) Linear regression model, b) Spatial Autoregressive Model (SAR) and c) Spatial Error Model (SEM). For the model estimation, traffic volume data for the year 2019 and 2020 from 3,957 detectors were augmented with independent variables, such as- COVID-19 case information, socioeconomics, land-use and built environment characteristics, roadway characteristics, meteorological information, and spatial locations. Traffic volume data was analyzed separately for weekdays and holidays. SEM models …

Accuracy And Uncertainty In Traffic And Transit Ridership Forecasts, Jawad Mahmud Hoque

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Investments of public dollars on highway and transit infrastructure are influenced by the anticipated demands for highways and public transportations or traffic and transit ridership forecasts. The purpose of this study is to understand the accuracy of road traffic forecasts and transit ridership forecasts, to identify the factors that affect their accuracy, and to develop a method to estimate the uncertainty inherent in those forecasts. In addition, this research investigates the pre-pandemic decline in transit ridership across the US metro areas since 2012 and its influence on the accuracy of transit forecasts.

The sample of 1,291 road projects from the …

Evaluation Of Scoring Methods For Prioritizing Pedestrian And Bicycle Projects, Daria Korostina

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

To increase the number of pedestrian and bicycle facilities and to grow the number of people using those facilities in Kentucky more such projects need to be implemented. The Strategic Highway Investment Formula for Tomorrow (SHIFT) is a data-driven approach that Kentucky uses for prioritizing projects in the state, but its focus is auto-centric. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a prioritization scoring approach for pedestrian and bicycle projects that could be implemented into SHIFT. The study used the SHIFT–2022 pedestrian and bicycle projects to develop and evaluate different scoring scenarios. After scoring each project on …

Identifying And Evaluating The Perceptions Of Near-Miss Reporting Within The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Seth Atkins

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

In the field of construction, most safety data and practices focus on preventing and mitigating serious incidents resulting in injuries or fatalities. However, on construction sites, near-miss events occur more frequently than said serious incidents and, under marginally different conditions, could potentially lead to damages, injuries, or fatalities. Therefore, near-miss reporting can serve as a useful tool for managing safety as it allows for workers to identify and managers to address potential risk factors within construction sites. While most construction companies have implemented some method for reporting near-miss events, many organizations, such as the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC), struggle with …

Using Machine Learning Technique To Develop A Deterioration Predicting Model For Pavement Marking In Florida, Ehab Abdelmaksoud

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Longitudinal pavement markings play a significant role on the roadways by delivering information to motorists to help them navigate and follow the road. These markings are also considered to be a crucial control device that can enhance ideal nighttime visibility, especially on rural roads where the surrounding luminance is insufficient. Hence, the main question for public agencies or officials is about when the replacement of the pavement markings needs to take place. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is considering proposing a minimum level of retroreflectivity standard and based on that, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) set aside …

Generative Modeling Of Human Behavior: Social Interaction And Networked Coordination In Shared Facilities, Saumya Gupta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Urbanization is bringing together various modes of transport, and with that, there are challenges to maintaining the safety of all road users, especially vulnerable road users (VRUs). Therefore, there is a need for street designs that encourages cooperation and resource sharing among road users. Shared space is a street design approach that softens the demarcation of vehicles and pedestrian traffic by reducing traffic rules, traffic signals, road markings, and regulations. Understanding the interactions and trajectory formations of various VRUs will facilitate the design of safer shared spaces. It will also lead to many applications, such as implementing reliable ad hoc …

Analytical Study Of Deep Learning Methods For Road Condition Assessment, Elham Eslami

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Automated pavement distress recognition is a key step in smart infrastructure assessment. Advances in deep learning and computer vision have improved the automated recognition of pavement distresses in road surface images. This task, however, remains challenging due to the high variations in road objects and pavement types, variety of lighting condition, low contrast, and background noises in pavement images. In this dissertation, we propose novel deep learning algorithms for image-based road condition assessment to tackle current challenges in detection, classification and segmentation of pavement images. Motivated by the need for classifying a wide range of objects in road monitoring, this …

Exact Algorithms For Practical Instances Of The Railcar Loading Problem At Marine Container Terminals, Manwo Ng, Dung-Ying Lin

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

With the growth in global trade and its environmental footprint, sustainable modes of freight movement are increasingly important in today’s globalized world. This study focuses on on-dock rail, where the rail terminal is located within the marine container terminal. On-dock rail has in recent years become an essential mode of transportation to move containers out of congested marine container terminals. This study contributes to the literature by presenting tailored exact solution algorithms for a recently proposed optimization model to optimize the loading of double-stack trains. In particular, a 3-stage solution framework is presented for the case when rail cars have …

An Econometric Analysis Of Domestic Aviation In The Us, Sudipta Dey Tirtha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

In this dissertation, we examine two dimensions of domestic aviation - demand and delay - that directly influence economic impact of the sector. We conduct a comprehensive analysis of airline demand employing airline data compiled by Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The demand analysis is conducted in three steps. First, we propose a novel modeling approach for modeling airline demand evolution over time. Specifically, we develop a joint panel group generalized ordered probit (GGOP) model system for modeling air passenger arrivals and departures in a discretized framework that subsumes the traditional linear regression approach. Further, we consider the influence of observed …

Modeling Crash Severity And Collision Types Using Machine Learning, Amit Kumar, Hari Krishnan Melempat Kalapurayil

Data

Traffic safety analysis is the fundamental step for reducing economic, social, and environmental cost incurred due to traffic accidents. The essence of traffic safety is understanding the factors affecting crash occurrence, injury severity and collision type and their underlying relationships and predict-prevent future crash instances. Crash injury severity studies in past have utilized numerous statistical, econometric and Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to extract the underlying relationship between the crash causal factors and the consequent severity or collision type. The study aims to explore the Multi-Label Classification (MLC) tool from the domain of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for …

Modeling Crash Severity And Collision Types Using Machine Learning, Amit Kumar, Hari Krishnan Melempat Kalapurayil

Publications

Traffic safety analysis is the fundamental step for reducing economic, social, and environmental cost incurred due to traffic accidents. The essence of traffic safety is understanding the factors affecting crash occurrence, injury severity and collision type and their underlying relationships and predict-prevent future crash instances. Crash injury severity studies in past have utilized numerous statistical, econometric and Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to extract the underlying relationship between the crash causal factors and the consequent severity or collision type. The study aims to explore the Multi-Label Classification (MLC) tool from the domain of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for …

Biking In Indianapolis: An Ethnographic Analysis Of Obstacles And Solutions, Emory Lietz

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Indiana is known as the ""Crossroads of America"" for its historic investment in vehicle infrastructure. This focus on automobiles has shaped Indianapolis's urban landscape, to the dismay of many cyclists. Based on semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders in the Indianapolis cycling community, including urban planners, bike commuters, IndyGo employees, city government officials, and bike advocates, this project identifies and evaluates the current barriers that prevent Indianapolis residents from riding their bikes. These obstacles, which include infrastructural, safety, and social factors, make it more difficult than it ought to be to bike in Indy.

For my thesis project, I …

Exploration Of The Characteristics And Trends Of Electric Vehicle Crashes: A Case Study In Norway, Chenhui Liu, Li Zhao, Chaoru Lu

Mid-America Transportation Center: Final Reports and Technical Briefs

With the rapid growth of electric vehicles (EVs) in the past decade, many new traffic safety challenges are also emerging. With the crash data of Norway from 2011 to 2018, this study gives an overview of the status quo of EV crashes. In the survey period, the proportion of EV crashes in total traffic crashes had risen from zero to 3.11% in Norway. However, in terms of severity, EV crashes do not show statistically significant differences from the Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (ICEV) crashes. Compared to ICEV crashes, the occurrence of EV crashes features on weekday peak hours, urban areas, …

Distracted Driving And Pedestrians' Effects On Headway At Signalized Intersections, Bassel Elgamal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Distracted driving and pedestrians pose one of the most difficult challenges to ensuring a safe and efficient transportation system. Modern communications have delivered greater convenience. However, this has come at the cost of attention spans. Safety has been thoroughly explored in terms of distracted driving and pedestrians. However, impacts on traffic operations have received minimal research attention. Few studies provided a theoretical mechanism on how intersection operations can be affected but failed to quantify the real-life impacts on traffic operations. Furthermore, new Florida laws prohibit cellphone usage while driving but is allowed when the vehicle is stationary, which may result …

High Fidelity Injury Severity Analysis Using Econometric Modeling Approaches, Ahmed Kabli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Crash severity models are typically developed using police reported injury severity databases. However, several research studies have identified various challenges associated with police reported data. Therefore, the current dissertation is focusing on developing high resolution crash severity models based on medical professional driver injury severity reported using Abbreviated Injury Scale for eight body regions. The dissertation focused on developing a disaggregate injury severity modeling framework that can enhance the estimation accuracy of independent variable impacts on severity. Within this broad research vision, the dissertation has multiple objectives. First, a joint random parameters multivariate model structure with as many dimensions as …

Optimizing Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Investments And Activities To Improve Safety And Increase Revenue Collections, Brian Howell, Jennifer Walton, Andrew Martin

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) owns and maintains 14 fixed weigh stations for commercial vehicle enforcement. The Kentucky State Police (KSP) is responsible for staffing these facilities to conduct enforcement, while KYTC is responsible for constructing and maintaining these facilities. Like many states, Kentucky has experienced a decline of enforcement personnel to operate weigh stations limiting its ability to conduct inspections for safety enforcement and revenue collection. This study analyzes three CMV facilities for their impact on safety enforcement and revenue collection and determines their viability for potential replacement. All three existing weigh stations in Hardin, Fulton, and Henderson counties …

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 …

A Deep Learning Approach For Spatiotemporal-Data-Driven Traffic State Estimation, Amr Hatem Ragaa Abdelraouf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The past decade witnessed rapid developments in traffic data sensing technologies in the form of roadside detector hardware, vehicle on-board units, and pedestrian wearable devices. The growing magnitude and complexity of the available traffic data has fueled the demand for data-driven models that can handle large scale inputs. In the recent past, deep-learning-powered algorithms have become the state-of-the-art for various data-driven applications. In this research, three applications of deep learning algorithms for traffic state estimation were investigated. Firstly, network-wide traffic parameters estimation was explored. An attention-based multi-encoder-decoder (Att-MED) neural network architecture was proposed and trained to predict freeway traffic speed …

Automated Vehicle To Vehicle Conflict Analysis At Signalized Intersections By Camera And Lidar Sensor Fusion, Alabi Mehzabin Anisha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This research presents an approach for safety diagnosis using sensor fusion techniques. This work fuses the outputs of a roadside low-resolution camera and a solid-state LiDAR. For vehicle classification and detection in videos, the YOLO v5 object detection model was utilized. The raw 3D point clouds generated by the LiDAR are processed by two manual steps - ground plane transformation and background segmentation, and two real-time steps - foreground clustering, and bounding box fitting. Taking the generated 2D bounding boxes of both camera and LiDAR, we associate the common bounding box pairs by thresholding on the Euclidean distance threshold of …

Assessing Public Perception And Proposing An Organized Questionnaire For The Deployment And Adoption Of Autonomous Vehicles, Md Rakibul Islam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Since the general public will play a central role in the evolution of AVs, research has been performed to assess their perception and acceptance of AVs. Nevertheless, the most potential users of AVs, i.e., young, students, and more educated people, have not received any particular focus in those studies. This research gap has motivated us to assess their perceptions. Extensive data analyses of the survey at the University of Central Florida with a sample of 315 reveal that on average 57% of the respondents were familiar with AVs, and about 44% of the respondents felt positive perceptions toward AVs. Around …

Incorporating Speed Into Crash Modeling For Rural Two-Lane Highways, Fahmida Rahman

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Rural two-lane highways account for 76% in mileages of the total paved roads in the US. In Kentucky, these roads represent 85 % of the state-maintained mileages. Crashes on these roads account for 40% of all crashes, 47% of injury crashes, and 66% of fatal crashes on state-maintained roads. These statistics draw attention to the need to investigate the crashes on these roads. Several factors such as road geometries, traffic volume, human behavior, etc. contribute to crashes on a road. Recently, studies have identified speed as one of the key factors of crashes as well as the severity associated with …

Load And Pressure Distribution As A Function Of Dynamic Contact Stress At The Railroad Crosstie-Ballast Interface, Habib Abdil Unluoglu

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Excessive crosstie wear and abrasion and ballast wear and fouling are two of the fundamental problems contributing to inadequate railroad track performance. This adversely affects the attainment and long-term maintenance of desired track geometric requirements. The magnitudes and distribution of the stresses at the crosstie-ballast (CT-B) interface must be known to determine the stress distribution on the ballast. However, the stresses at the top of the ballast often vary significantly. This study examines a new approach to predicting dynamic contact pressures at the interface of crosstie and ballast using the ‘square wave theory.’ A data set of in-track CT-B interfacial …

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 …

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 …