Many transportation agencies utilize freeway service patrols (FSPs) to quickly identify and respond to incidents. The current research explored the safety benefits of Florida’s FSP program known as Road Rangers – harnessed from lowering the likelihood of secondary crashes (SCs) – compared to other responding agencies. The model results revealed that a minute increase in incident impact duration increased the SC probability by 1.2 percent, with other factors held constant. Based on a 16-minutes decrease in incident impact duration, the Road Rangers program could lessen the probability of SCs by 21 percent, compared to other agencies. These findings could be beneficial to incident managers, responders, and researchers in evaluating the program’s performance.
Bike-sharing has emerged as an alternative travel mode for trips that are longer to walk but shorter to drive. For the first time in this research area, we used a text network approach to understand the public perception of docked and dockless bike-sharing systems. The text network approach enables the analysis of the open-ended text responses by creating a network based on the frequency and co-occurrence of keywords in a sentence. Our empirical analysis shows that Seattle residents appreciate dockless bike-sharing systems for their flexibility. However, they are unhappy about the blocked sidewalks due to parked bikes and less usage of helmets.
I am pleased to share our recent journal article titled “Safety Evaluation of High-Occupancy Toll Facilities Using Bayesian Networks”.
This work is one of the few studies that evaluated the safety performance of high occupancy toll (HOT) facilities. We used a Bayesian Network (BN) approach to identify a probabilistic relation between single- and multiple- vehicle crashes on HOT facilities.
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Do you want to learn more about red light cameras? Check out our recent paper that used a full Bayes approach to investigate the impact of red light cameras on crashes.
Shout out to my amazing co-authors, i.e., Fabio Soto, M.S., E.I., Priyanka Alluri, PhD, PE, and Md Asif Raihan, PhD.
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This work would not have been successful without the support of Mr. Hector A. Vargas, E.I. and Ms. Liana Roque, who assisted with the data collection.
Outstanding PhD Student Award
To be recognized as an Outstanding Doctoral Degree Graduate at Florida International University (FIU) College of Engineering and Computing is truly an honor. I may be the recipient of the award, however credit goes to my advisor Dr. Priyanka Alluri, PhD, PE and everyone who has supported me during my tenure as a doctoral student. Shout out to my FIU Lab mates Sajidur Rahman Nafis, Henrick Haule, Sultan Ali, Cecilia Kadeha, John Kodi, and Jimoku Hinda Salum. Many thanks to the organizers of the FIU College of Engineering and Computing Induction to the Profession Ceremony. Special thanks to our college dean, Dean John (Yiannis) Volakis, and Keynote Speaker Mr. Meyer Sarshalom for their inspiring, encouraging, and motivating speeches.
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Happy holidays!
PhD Defense
I am honored to announce that I successfully defended my PhD in Civil Engineering at Florida International University. My doctoral research focused on investigating approaches to identify and mitigate secondary crashes in real-time. What a fun project this was! I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Priyanka Alluri, PhD, PE, PE for her immense and tireless support in my research work. Thank you for being my mentor and role model. Special thanks to my dissertation committee members Dr. Albert Gan, Dr. Mohammed Hadi, Dr. Xia Jin, Dr. Wensong Wu, and Dr. Thobias Sando for your valuable input to my dissertation. Your constructive suggestions have highly improved the quality of my work.
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Dear mama, thank you for teaching me to dream big! One milestone achieved, onto the next one.
Real-time traffic monitoring (RTM) system is one of the key components of the Intelligent Transportation Systems that can aid traffic operators to timely implement congestion mitigation countermeasures. As such, the intent of this algorithm is to leverage open crowdsourced traffic data by developing a RTM tool. The developed tool has three main tasks to complete: collecting real-time travel time data using an Application Programming Interface (API), processing this data, and visualizing different operational performance measures on a dashboard based on this evaluation. The developed tool also is capable of generating a report based on a specified period of analysis.
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2020 TRB Annual Meeting
It was yet another amazing adventure to attend and present at the 2020 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting. This was my fifth time attending this meeting and the experience has never been better. I had an opportunity to present nine research topics in the areas of highway safety (secondary crashes, work zone safety, pedestrian safety, highway-railroad crossing, and express lane safety) and traffic operations (fundamental diagrams and freeway service patrol). Special thanks to my co-authors. I could not have done it without your support.
Cheers to more collaborations in the future!
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As a student, I feel incredibly lucky to attend and participate in professional meetings. While the school equips me with the necessary skills to be a successful Transportation Engineer (hard skills), these meetings develop and sharpen my professional and leadership skills (soft skills). In the 2019 FLPRITE Annual Meeting, I have learned how Automated, Connected, Electric and Shared-use (ACES) vehicles will affect our Roadway System from policies to roadway design elements like pavement markings and signs. The meeting also provided me with a platform to present my dissertation work which focuses on the use of emerging technology to mitigate secondary crashes. Special thanks go to GCCITE and my Advisor Dr. Alluri for sponsoring my attendance at this meeting.
2019 Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship Recipient
This was a remarkable moment of my life, one that I will remember forever. This journey started when I was selected as the winner of the SF WTS chapter scholarship recipient and my application was forwarded to the WTS International Committee for consideration in the national scholarship award. I am grateful for being a part of the WTS community. Not only has WTS provided a platform for my professional, leadership, and mentoring skills excellence, it has also given me an opportunity to expand my professional network and interpersonal skills.
The tournament involved proposing Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies and Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSM&O) solutions for a real-world problem facing the state Department of Transportations (DOTs). As a team leader, I assembled a diverse team of students from the Florida International University departments of civil and environmental engineering and computer and electrical engineering and Florida State University Civil and Environmental Engineering. We worked with the Florida Department of Transportation and proposed Connected Vehicle applications to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety and mobility. Our team was among the top four finalists.