Fire hazards threaten human life and property safety. Since it is unrealistic to study human behavior during a real fire hazard, computational tools are a better choice to computational tools are a better choice to simulate fire growth and human behavior for predicting evacuation performance in chaotic emergency situations. Although...
Debris generated after a disaster event must be disposed efficiently for community recovery. This is a significant operation that accounts for up to 27% of the total recovery costs. Generally, debris removal takes place in two phases: the short-term relief phase, which involves debris removal immediately after a disaster to...
Bicyclist safety at urban intersections is a critical element for encouraging an increase in bicycle commuting. With bicycle injury and fatality rates rising due to collisions with vehicles at signalized intersections, increasing the safety of riders continues to be an important consideration when promoting this mode of transportation. Previous research...
This thesis develops a framework for analyzing the application of commuter rail and
bus services between several small urban centers to enhance overall connectivity. The
study includes analyzing specific performance criteria for commuter rail service and
express bus service based on data from existing systems around the U.S. The study...
Highway construction projects require temporary changes in roadway characteristics, such as the number of operational lanes, lane path, lane width, shoulder width, and posted speed limit. These modifications which are often temporary in nature have the potential to impact driving performance. Many research efforts have focused on developing standards to...
Dilemma zones on the approach to high-speed signalized intersections have been identified as a safety problem that can contribute to rear–end and right–angle crashes. However, in situations when a pair of vehicles is caught in the dilemma zone, it is not well understood how the following vehicle’s headway and classification...
The concept of construction industrialization, first raised in the 1960s, refers to the transfer of on-site construction work to an off-site factory to improve quality and reduce cost, time, and safety issues. In some countries, industrialization of construction projects is highly recommended and promoted by governments and local construction institutions...
Signalized intersections often provide pushbuttons to call for pedestrian service to minimize conflicting movements between road users. Signalized midblock crossings typically increase safety for pedestrians in locations with high traffic volumes and multiple lanes in each direction. However, unnecessary vehicular delay occurs from “ghost” pedestrian intervals when someone activates the...
Travel demand has increased due to population growth, increase of vehicle ownership, and development patterns resulting in greater levels of congestion, pollution, and crash frequency. One approach to demand management is to increase the share of trips made by bicycles. With the increase in bicycling rates, there is a critical...
Students in undergraduate engineering programs typically do not synthesize content learned from disparate course work until the end of their final terms of college. As an example, in undergraduate civil engineering programs, transportation engineering concepts (e.g., geometric alignment, asphalt design procedures) and geotechnical engineering concepts (e.g., shear strength of soils,...