citsmnwsltr0201

8/12/2019 citsmnwsltr0201

1/6

THETRANSPORTERA Newsletter From The Center For Integrated Transportation Systems Management

Spring 2010

I N S I D E

COVERSTORYPages 2-4

STUDENTSPOTLIGHTPage 3

FACULTYSPOTLIGHTPage 4

ALIHAGHANINAMED

DIRECTOROFCITSMPAGE4

RECENTEVENTSPage 5

CITSM | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineeringwww.citsm.umd.edu

DEVELOPMENTOFADVANCED

APPLICATIONSUSINGBLUETOOTH-

GENERATEDTRAFFICFLOWDATA


2/6

Cover Story

This project which is generally referred to

as the Bluetooth Project is focused ondeveloping methods and tools to post-

process travel time data received from Bluetoothdata collection devices. e project is in itssecond year of support from CITSM and has

produced some very useful soware tools andproducts that have many versatile applicationsin Bluetooth data analysis and evaluation. e

projects lead investigators are Mr. Philip Tarnoffand Dr. Ali Haghani.

e Bluetooth traffi c detection technolog y thatis developed at the Department of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering Center for AdvancedTransportation Technology is based on signalsavailable from the point-to-point networking

protocol commonly referred to as Bluetooth.is technology has been continuously in usesince 2008 in validation performed on INRIXdata purchased by I-95 Corridor Coalition underProbe Vehicle project. e Bluetooth monitoring

system consists of several detectors and a centralprocessing unit. ese detectors are deployed ona freeway or arterial in proximity to the roadwayat the base of a sign post or guard rail post. eseunits are the size of a large briefcase or small carryon. A photo of the device and a sample placementnext to a sign post are shown in Figure 1.

Roadside deployment of Bluetooth sensors calls

for safety measures to protect operators, devicesand general stream of traffi c alike. Figure 2 showssome typical safety gears and equipment used bydeployment team. Two of the key researchers inthe project who are featured in Figure 2 are Mr.Kaveh F. Sadabadi and Mr. Masoud Hamedi.Other project personnel include Ms. MonaAsudegi and Mr. Yashar Aliyari. Some diffi cultiesin retrieving sensors from under a heap of snowresulting from the most recent snow storm inMaryland on capital beltway are depicted in

Figure 3.

Figure 1. e Bluetooth detector deployed during data collectionFigure 2. Typical Bluetooth detector deployment locations andsafety equipment

continued on page 3

[2] the trAnsporter| spring

Development of Advanced Applications UsingBluetooth-Generated Traffic Flow Data

Written by: Dr. Ali Haghani


3/6

JAmes ClArk sChool of engineering| DepArtment of Civil AnD environmentAl engineering

Student S P O T L I G H

M I CHAE L MAN E S

Atrue Terp! Mr. Maness received hisbachelor degree in Civil Engineerand Computer Science from theUniversity of Maryland in 2009 and decidto stay at UMD for his masters degree.He is currently a graduate student in theDepartment of Civil and Environmental

Engineering specializing in TransportationEngineering, with a December 2010expected completion.

As a graduate research assistant he iscurrently working for the department ofCivil and Environmental Engineering onhis second CITSM project, investigatingfuture vehicle technologies, fuel andvehicle taxation, and tolling policies forimplementation in discrete choice modelsof car ownership in Maryland. As well asdesigning combined revealed and statedpreference surveys on the effects ofvehicle technology, fuel pricing, taxation,and tolling on car ownership. In his newposition, Michael continues the work thathe started as an undergraduate, preparingweb-based surveys used for online datacollection. Additionally he is helpingsupervise foreign exchange students in theresearch and development of revealed andstated preference surveys on car ownersh

Already active, Michael is a student membof the American Society of Civil Engineerthe National Society of Black Engineers, a

the Transportation Research Board. Morenotably, he was awarded the Louis StokesAlliance for Minority Participation Bridgeto the Doctorate Fellowship.

After graduation, Michaels goals are toobtain a Ph.D in Transportation Engineeriwith a focus in travel behavior analysis,further expand on his research as aprofessor, and to create a multi-disciplinetravel behavior analysis laboratory.

e Bluetooth protocol uses an electronic identifier, or tag , ineach device called a Machine Access Control address, or MACaddress for short. e MAC address serves as an electronicnickname so that electronic devices can keep track of whos whoduring data communications. It is these MAC addresses that areused as the basis for obtaining traffi c information. e conceptfor deriving traffi c information in this manner is illustrated in

Figure 4. Normally, a majority of the detected devices are seenat multiple stations when several Bluetooth sensors are deployedalong a stretch of highway. When the MAC address of a device ismatched between two consecutive sensors, the difference in timebetween the detections at the two sensors represent the travel timeof the vehicle carrying the device.e matched MAC addresses for all devices that are detectedbetween two consecutive sensors can be used to develop a sampleof travel time for that particular segment of the roadway. e

research team has developed a sophisticated methodology for dataprocessing, filtering outliers and data analysis.

Figure 3. Typical problems in Bluetooth dector deployment and retrieval

continued on page 4

Figure 4. Bluetooth traffi c monitoring operation concept

over Story,ntinued from page 2


4/6

Dr. Catherine Plaisant is a SeniorResearch Scientist and AssociateDirector of Research at the HumanComputer Interaction Lab of the University

of Maryland Institute for Advanced Comput

Studies. She earned a Doctorat dIngenieur

degree in France (~ Industrial Engineering

PhD) and co-authored with Ben Shneiderma

the 4th and 5th Editions of Designing the

User Interface, one of the major books on

the topic of Human-Computer Interaction.

She has written over 100 refereed papers on

topics as varied as information visualization,

digital libraries, universal access, technology

for families, or evaluation methodologies. Sh

enjoys working in HCIL with multidisciplina

teams on designing and evaluating new inter

technologies that are useable and useful.Research contributions range from focused u

interaction techniques (e.g.Excentric Labelin

to innovative visualizations (such as LifeLine

personal records or SpaceTree for hierarchic

data exploration) and interactive search inte

techniques which is the subject of her curren

CITSM project.

With graduate student Krist Wongsuphasawa

she is developing interfaces to explore temp

patterns in categorical data, expanding earlywork done with electronic health records

and applying our findings to tools that help

analysts search and explore databases of incid

management data. While the transportation

community emphasizes developing standard

archiving and transmitting raw incident data

more effort is needed to design appropriate

visual analytics tools to explore the data and

extract meaningful knowledge.

facultyB I O G R A P H

CATHERINE PLAISA

During the first year, the project focus was on determiningminimum required sample sizes to reliably portray traffi cconditions, identifying and eliminating sample outliers,filtering raw data in an automatic vehicle identificationsetting for real time travel time estimation and optimalsensor location to maximize travel time estimation reliability.

e project team has successfully completed the firstyear of this project and the result of their work has beendisseminated through several publications and presentations.Currently, the focus of the project is on real-time short termfreeway travel time prediction, developing procedures fordistinguishing between motor vehicles and pedestrians inurbanized areas, and automatic identification of the existenceof freeway incidents. For more information regardingthis project contact Dr. Ali Haghani at 301.405.1963 or

[email protected].

[4] the trAnsporter| spring

Cover Story,ontinued from page 3

Ali Haghani Named Director of CITSM

Dr. Ali Haghani has been Named Director of the Center forIntegrated Transportation Systems Management (CITSM),replacing Mr. Philip Tarnoff who recently retired.

Dr. Haghani is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering at the University of Maryland at College

Park. He holds a BS degree in civil engineering from Shiraz University inIran and an MS and a PhD degree in civil engineering from NorthwesternUniversity. Prior to coming to the University of Maryland, he taught as anAssistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and was a Post DoctoralFellow and Research Scientist at Northwestern University. Dr. Haghaniis an expert in transportation systems analysis, large scale mathematicalmodeling, traffi c management, logistics, and emergency response.

Dr. Haghani has over twenty years of experience in research andeducation as well as vast experience in managing research programs andadministrative expertise. Some of his most recent completed projects are

the evaluation of the cellular probe data for the Baltimore MultimodalTraveler Information System (MMTIS). He is currently conducting theevaluation of the real-time travel data provided by Inrix to I-95 CorridorCoalition member states as part of the I-95 Corridor Coalition VehicleProbe Project.

As the chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineeringand one of the authors of the original proposal founding CITSM, Dr.Haghani has been closely involved with the Center from the start. Hewill work hard to continue the CITSMs tradition of supporting excitingnew research into integrated transportation systems management.


5/6

JAmes ClArk sChool of engineering| DepArtment of Civil AnD environmentAl engineering

Recent Events - Seminar Series

Passenger Transport Demand Modeling atEuropean Level - Political Background, Methods,and Application Examples

Speaker: Dr. Eckhard Szimba, Ph.D., is a senior researcherat the Institute for Economic Policy Research (IWW) ofthe Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany.In 2006 he finished his PhD on the development of a

methodology for analysing interdependencies betweentransport infrastructure projects. His PhD was awarded bythe European Friedrich List Prize in 2007.

Seminar Abstract:Presented on January 15, this seminarcovered the different aspects of (passenger) transport demandmodelling at strategic European level will be presented. epolitical need for transport demand modelling at Europeanlevel will be addressed, by tackling the process of Europeanintegration and the development of trans-Europeannetworks for transportation. Based on this, the policyrequirements transport demand models have to meet willbe outlined. Insight in the methods applied for passengertransport demand modelling will also be discussed. Selectedmethodological aspects will be presented with respect totwo models: the long-distance passenger transport demandmodel VACLAV developed at the Institute for EconomicPolicy Research (IWW); and the designated referencetransport demand and assessment model of the EuropeanUnion, TRANS-TOOLS.

Impact of White House Street Closings

Speaker: Dr. Fred Ducca, Ph.D., National Center forSmart Growth, has 30 years of experience in travel demandmodeling and forecasting. He holds a B.S. in Mathematicsfrom St. Peters college, an MBA from the Wharton School,University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in City Planningfrom the University of Pennsylvania.

Seminar Abstract: Presented on February 19, this seminardiscussed the aftermath of September 11, and how the streetclosings around the White House, for Security purposes,caused major rerouting of traffic in downtown D.C. andsurrounding areas. e FHWA conducted a study on theeffects of these closings on traffic and possible strategies tomitigate the impacts. To do this a model was constructedto simulate the movements of 2 million vehicles in thedowntown DC area and to account for 20 million movingwithin the DC region. is seminar will cover the purpose

of the study, the findings and methods for presentingtechnical findings in a form which non-technical audiencescan understand.

Transit Simulation for the White House AreaTransportation Study: An Overview of theAnalysis Issues, Methodologies, and Results

Speaker: Mr. Brian Gardner, team leader for the PlanningMethods Team within the Office of Planning at the FederalHighway Administration. Mr. Gardner earned a BSCE and

MCE from North Carolina State University.

Seminar Abstract: Presented on March 12, this semindiscussed the White House Area Transportation Stucommissioned by Congress which evaluated options mitigate congestion caused by the street closures in vicinity of the White House in response to security concere study considered significant construction optioto restore the street grid, operations options to redu

congestion impacts, and transit options to restore perscapacity through the area. e model framework employa dynamic router integrated with a large area meso-scsimulation overlayed on the existing MPO trip model. presentation focused on the transit options and included:overview of the analysis methodologies, a summary of results and various ways to present them; and a discussiof modeling issues and lessons learned.

Exploratory Advanced Research at FederHighway Administration

Speaker: Mr. David Kuehn, Program Manager for

Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) ExploratAdvanced Research Program. He holds a Masters of PubAdministration from the University of Southern Califorand a B.A from the University of California, Irvine anda member of the American Institute of Certified Plann(AICP).

Seminar Abstract: Presented on March 31, this semindiscussed the transportation industry facing unprecedenchallenges. In order to meet those challenges, the indusneeds to engage in high-risk, breakthrough research. Relyonly on incremental improvements will not meet futuneeds. e Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)

building capacity for high-risk, high-impact research engaging research partnerships across sectors and acrdisciplines. Federal legislation established an exploratoadvanced research (EAR) program that addresses longer teand higher risk breakthrough research with the potential dramatic long-term improvements to plan, build, reneand operate safe, congestion-free and environmentasound transportation systems. e FHWA EAR Progrfunds exploratory advanced research across the range issues critical to the transportation industry. Using fand open competition and expert review to identify arof research focus and assess technical excellence, the FHWhas awarded funding for 29 projects during involving different universities and colleges, 13 private businesseight state and local agencies and five federal laboratorincluding the Turner Fairbank Highway Research CentResearch includes both foundational work that anticipathe questions and future needs in applied research and tapplication of innovations from other industries to ttransportation sector. is presentation will discuss the rof EAR in preparing for the future of transportation aprocesses FHWA uses for partnerships that are leading tway.


6/6

ABoUt Citsmt C iad taa symaa (Citsm) a Uy mayadC pa wa abd a a i uyaa c 2008. t a c D Adacd tcy, idpc, ad eacd oazaa sucu iad maa ad oa taa fac ad Cd.

t Citsm cu d ,c ad ua a a a aa ad a dayaa aucu. suc a aw b dd cca a aa ac a a aw bjc ddua u adac. iad a aa

aucu a a y a a a cc ddua uc, a fica y ficcy a aud byduc a ad c a w a aby. iad ya w a a ac acy, ay, a quay ad y cu.

t C iad taasy maa. t C cduc acad d duca ad cy a a . t bjc ac d d by ad ducd c a ad u a aaaucu. t a w ad aa aa ya a cud a, , ada. t Uy mayad a cd bcau a ficay aa y by ad aba dad by uu ac jccducd by acuy ad a. A cd, bu quaa, bjc C duca a aa ad aw dd a aa ad

a day aa aucu ad d udad bfi uc a uyad y.

Center forIntegrated TransportationSystems Management

1173 g l. ma haUy mayadC pa, mD 20742

p: 301.403.2069fax: 301.403.4591www.c.ud.du

citsmnwsltr0201

Documents

Transcript of citsmnwsltr0201