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Big Data

Modern Project Prioritization For Transportation Investments

Historically, transportation agencies’ main priority has been to fund, build and expand highways to safely meet the growing demand for vehicle travel. Their project prioritization processes, therefore, have focused primarily on improving capacity along the most congested major routes. Many of these agencies, however, have experienced a shift in priorities toward the maintenance of existing infrastructure, the facilitation of multi-modal transportation, and the operations and management of existing infrastructure—applications that can be more challenging to fund.

Enhancing Traffic Flow And Driving Safety Via Artificial Intelligence

Motivated by the priorities highlighted by Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) and following the guidelines in the recent presidential “Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” in 2019, this proposal aims to utilize the state-of-the-art tools and techniques in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science to automatically identify and report traffic-related anomalies and hazards using live traffic camera footage across major highways and arterial roads in the State of Texas.

Measuring Transportation Network Performance during Emergency Evacuations: A Case Study of Hurricane Irma Camp Fire

The United States has witnessed several natural disasters in recent memory. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, and floods not only cause extensive monetary damages but also lead to spatio-temporal displacement of affected residents. Often, in these scenarios, governments at various levels – state/regional/local – grapple with how to effectively evacuate those affected while ensuring their safe relocation, and minimal risk.

Investigation, Testing, and Development of an RFID System for Effective Maintenance of the Existing National Transportation Infrastructure

The focus of this project is the investigation, testing and further development of a RFID system to efficiently maintain the existing transportation infrastructure; especially Roadways and Bridges. For Example, in the event of an active snowfall or blizzard, snow may pile up and ice over on the roadway and bridges causing hazardous conditions for cars and trucks. The current warning systems employed utilizes a LED display board that advises the drivers to take caution, but it does not provide data.

Social Media Analysis for Transit Assessment

The impact of personal opinions, attitudes, and belief is significant in decision-making processes for public transportation services. Therefore, stakeholders and transportation planners have been trying to collect various information on public transit service and performance to assess quality and management strategies. In this regime, social network service (SNS) can be considered as a large but unorganized database of information where individuals exchange event base attitude and sentiment (i.e., experience from individual transportation activity).

Development of a Real-time Roadway Debris Hazard Spotting Tool Using Connected Vehicle Data to Enhance Roadway Safety and System Efficiency

Roadway debris and other unexpected obstructions, such as surface damage, or lane hydroplaning due to weather conditions like snow or precipitation, can lead to significant traffic delays or worse, crashes. The presence of roadway debris is particularly concerning in high-traffic and high-speed roadways where dense traffic conditions reduce visibility and large volumes of vehicles are exposed to risk. Although prevention of the various causes of obstructions and defensive driving can reduce these consequences, the problem cannot be eliminated entirely.

Improving Transportation Performance Measurement via Open “Big Data” Systems – Phase 1

This project will create a “big data” centralized repository of archived real-time multimodal information to assist practitioners, researchers, and students in better understanding the transportation network across multiple regional geographic areas. This project will review data for multiple modes for inclusion in the repository, and develop open-source software for archiving this information that can be shared with all interested parties.