This project focuses on the development of methodologies for obtaining reliable Finite Element (FE) models of bridges from measurements of their structural response to ambient as well as earthquake and wind excitations. Comparing such models from different times, for example before and after an earthquake or before and after a maintenance/rehabilitation operation, can provide information on the presence of structural damage and/or on the effectiveness of a rehabilitation solution.

Project Description:Corrosion of steel bars in reinforced concrete structures is a major durability problem for bridges constructed in the New York State (NYS). The heavy use of deicing salt compounds this problem. Corrosion of steel bars results in loss of steel cross section, deterioration of bond between concrete and reinforcing bars, and more important, in most cases, it results in unsymmetrical concrete section that is susceptible to shear stresses produced by torsion.

The long-term operation and management strategy for long-span suspension bridges requires a suite of monitoring tools, starting with bridge structural health monitoring and extending to traffic monitoring and homeland security applications. This project will investigate the status of state-of-the-art technologies needed to improve the overall safety, reliability, availability, and longevity of long-span bridges.

This research has investigated the interactions of social media and transportation in the New York City Region, conducted both by public agencies and private companies. Transportation providers must disseminate often urgent messages about delays or incidents, and in light of the explosion of social media throughout public and private industries (approximately 800 million people are on Facebook#), it is essential that they seek out their audience where it is, rather than the converse.

The purpose of the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement (CMAQ) Program is to provide federal funding for projects and programs designed to assist nonattainment and maintenance areas in complying with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

There has recently been an increased interest in taking advantage of the latest Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies to improve the efficiency, safety, resiliency, and environmental friendliness of the transportation system. The focus of this proposal is one specific ITS application or user service, namely Archived Data Management Systems (ADMS. ADMS or ITS Data Warehouses are designed to archive, fuse, organize and analyze ITS data and can therefore support a wide range of very useful applications at a minimal additional cost.

While Manhattan’s streets may be the most congested—and carbon-emitting—in the country, the subway system that runs beneath them offers an inspiring example of how efficiently—and with what minimal emissions of greenhouse gases—passengers can be transported. Although the collection and transport of municipal solid wastes produces only a fraction of the congestion and emissions on Manhattan’s surface, in absolute terms the hundreds of thousands of annual truck miles these wastes cause are nonetheless quite significant.

The environmental and economic impacts of New York State’s waste-management system could be dramatically reduced by (a) decreasing the number of truck miles required to collect waste and (b) decreasing the demand for long-distance transport to remote disposal facilities.

The Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute proposes to conduct a study, with support from the University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) and with cofunding from the LRC’s Transportation Lighting Alliance (TLA) industry partnership program, of brightness perception from transportation lighting systems used on vehicles, and along roadways and other facilities. The immediate objective is to elucidate the visual mechanisms underlying brightness perception under nighttime lighting conditions.

Project Description