Man-made or natural disasters, either noticed or un-noticed, could result in severe life losses and property damages. Hurricane Sandy, for example, made landfall in a heavily populated urban area (New Jersey and New York City) in late 2012, causing117 deaths in the US and 69 more in Canada and the Caribbean, and leaving millions of people homeless and billions of dollars of damages.
Tires are the only element connecting the vehicle to the ground, transmitting the torques from the engine and carrying the loads of the vehicle. Recent development in automotive, defense and aerospace industries require tires to have superior combination of low energy loss, light weight, low contact pressure, balanced dampimg and stiffness, high durability and easy maintenance. Non-Pneumatic Tires (NPTs) [1,2], also called airless tires, have recently emerged as an alternative of traditional pneumatic tires.
Polymer modified binders are now extensively used in the asphalt industry. However, it is still not well understood how the polymers and the base binders interlock and whether the degree of interlocking impacts performance of polymer modified binders. The research has shown that low non-recoverable compliance values in the Multiple Stress Creep and Recovery test at 64 C appear to show significantly low rutting performance in the laboratory based on the flow time test.
The proposed exploratory research aims to investigate a novel probability-based analysis method for understanding and assessing the performance of roadway safety hardware (RSH) and roadway facilities under vehicle crashes. The failures of RSH systems such as median barriers, guardrails, bridge rails, terminals, and crash cushions subjected to vehicle crashes will be investigated, and the focus of this study is on concrete barriers.
Lose of vehicle's control in NY State during winter time increases transportation-related fatalities and injuries. In fact, fatalities and injuries due to icy roads are more than four times those from natural disasters at the national level. In addition to their high safety hazards, icy roads limit the growth of the economy in New York State - and other northern states - since they reduce the capacity of major highways due to slow traffic, accidents, or road closures.
New York City has been affected by extreme weather events in the last few years. In New York City access to public transit is critical to individuals making decisions about whether to evacuate and go to a shelter or somewhere further away, or to stay in place. The goal of the proposed research is to evaluate public transit services in areas considered to be at high risk for flooding in New York City and to provide a tool that can help transportation planners and city officials improve these services during evacuations.
The users of the roadway systems in the United States have been suffering from the poor condition levels of these systems for approximately the last two decades. When the Infrastructure Report Cards published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) are examined, it can be seen that the overall condition of the roads has been fluctuating between a grade of "D-" and a "D+" since 1998 (ASCE 1998, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013). In fact, according to the latest report card, approximately one-third (32%) of the major roads in the U.S. are in poor or mediocre conditions (ASCE 2013).
One critical task in regional traffic signal operations is how to establish different objectives and policies for varying arterial or subnetwork types. A typical urban network usually consists of different subnetwork types, such as central business district (CBD), suburban areas, and rural areas. The heterogeneous objective naturally arises for traffic signal operations on such different subnetworks. Very few literatures can be found to explicitly address the signal control problem in heterogeneous subnetworks.
Recent technology trends have allowed affordable and efficient collection of driver data. This has enabled a variety of potential applications, including more accurate pricing determinations for insurance and finer grained traffic planning for improved public safety. Although this technological growth provides for a wealth of new opportunities, given the safety implications of driving, there are many security and privacy issues that must be considered for their deployment.
Bridge fires can present a severe hazard to the transportation infrastructure system. In fact, a nationwide survey by the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) has shown that fires have collapsed approximately three times as many bridges as earthquakes. Bridge fires are often intense as they may be fueled by gasoline from vehicles that have crashed in the vicinity of the bridge. Additionally, code recommendations and guidelines for fire protection of bridges are lax.
