As part of our education and professional development activities for the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS), we're excited to announce the recipients of our 2019 CSCRS Road Safety Graduate Student Fellowships for this fall semester! This year's five awardees were from three different academic departments and submitted excellent applications for a wide range of student-initiated research projects.
The Fall 2019 CSCRS Road Safety Graduate Student Fellows:
Yingjia Feng, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Evaluate the Quality of the Biking Environment Based on Large-scale Analysis of Google Street View Images
My research aims to establish a methodology to evaluate the biking environment of city streets by conducting image segmentation on Google street view photos. The research will especially focus on identifying a set of better indicators from the segmentation results that can be the index of evaluating the biking environment for safety, and improve the accuracy of the evaluating method.
I'm feeling very lucky to be selected as a CSCRS fellow because this is the first time that my research interest is valued by other people. I'm very excited to start a whole new journey here with all the other fellows.
Guillaume Goujard, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Impact of a Traffic Light Failure on the Risk of Crashes at Intersections
The road network can be disrupted by various causes. A power outage deactivating signal lights is just one example of the many potential causes of massive road network disruptions. Other causes include natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.), or even cyber attacks. The impact of these extreme events has a significant impact on road safety and the goal of my project will be to quantify it.
I am honored to have been selected as a CSCRS Fellow. This award, by providing me with resources and mentoring, will allow me to contribute to this exciting field of research.
Chester Harvey, Department of City and Regional Planning
Examining Associations Between Human-Scale Streetscapes and Perceived Safety Among Pedestrians
Perceived safety is an important criterion for pedestrians deciding where, or even whether, to walk. My research examines how streetscape design influences safety perceptions using a combination of physiological stress indicators, participant photography, and semi-structured interviews to examine how participants react to diverse streetscapes. Results will inform how streetscape design may be used as a lever to promote perceived safety and encourage pedestrian transportation.
It is exciting to play a role in expanding conversations about the role of perceived safety in transportation behavior, and about how factors outside the traditional realm of transportation, such as streetscape design, can be incorporated into the transportation safety toolkit.
Edward Kim, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Formalization of Scenario Description via Probabilistic Programming Language
Scenario generation in simulation for autonomous vehicles is an uncharted territory and an urgent issue for road safety. My project will focus on developing a dynamic scenario (i.e. includes actions of traffic participants) description programming language that puts forth a groundwork for a systematic approach to simulation by formalizing the way scenario is described (syntax) and understood (semantics). Using the proposed language, we can abstract away from low-level reasoning on waypoints and trajectories, and reason at an intuitive high-level of understanding. We envision scenario description as a program that can be automatically compiled down to a machine readable code and be executed/simulated across different simulators.
I am excited to work on this innovative research direction and have a chance to share it with researchers in the CSCRS. I believe there is a strong connection between my proposed research and various CSCRS's research projects on safe systems, such as the work being done to link crash and post-crash data.
Marta Polovin, Department of City and Regional Planning
Putting a Price on Truck Parking: A Planning & Public Health Policy Perspective
My research aims to analyze the relationship between limited freight truck parking and operator-involved, fatigue-related collisions along one of the busiest freight corridors in the state, California’s Interstate 5 (I-5). Previous studies have not deeply explored how paid parking and market-based, demand-responsive pricing could be used as a regulatory tool to help reduce collisions and improve safety outcomes along highway systems. This study will conduct a state-level policy and equity analysis regarding the feasibility of implementing demand-responsive pricing for truck parking at Caltrans’ public rest stops.
I am deeply honored to have been selected as a CSCRS Fellow. Through the support of the fellowship and SafeTREC, I look forward to contributing to research that improves safety outcomes for truck drivers and for those sharing the road with them.
This fellowship provides graduate students with the opportunity to generate high quality research pertaining to road safety topics that align with the CSCRS mission to accelerate progress in reducing traffic injuries or fatalities by utilizing a systems approach to bring perspectives from planning, engineering, public health, data science, and robotics to the road safety field. Learn more about SafeTREC CSCRS.