Laboratories
Center for Accessibility and Safety for an Aging Population
Established as a Tier 1 University Transportation Center (UTC) and funded at $4.2 million by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), ASAP Center is a multidisciplinary collaboration organized to conduct research in the primary area of transportation engineering, as well as performing educational and outreach programs. With motivation from Florida's large number of senior residents, the reported relatively high involvement of seniors in traffic crashes nationwide, and their special needs for transportation, the theme of the center is to provide safe and accessible transportation to the aging population. The center is supported by a strong research team from various disciplines including civil and environmental engineering, urban planning, geography, psychology, sociology and health care management.
Transportation Engineering Laboratory
Transportation Engineering Laboratory aims to develop innovative and novel solutions to meeting mobility, accessibility and safety needs. Fully equipped with the state of the art equipment and software, the laboratory research areas include connected and automated vehicles, smart cities and urban mobility, freight logistics and traffic operations and safety.
Resilient Infrastructure & Disaster Response (RIDER) Center
The RIDER Center was founded with the mission of achieving resilience for communities affected by natural disasters such as hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic. RIDER researchers address a myriad of inter-related infrastructure design and management challenges that affect community resilience, from designing innovative materials and structures to resist wind and water, to identifying critical escape and emergency response routes. We develop sustainable practices for removing debris and restoring infrastructure systems after disasters, improve processes for manufacturing and supply of goods and services, and predict the effect of climate and land use on water supply and quality. Our multi-disciplinary approach is uniquely effective, coupling engineering and technology-driven solutions with social and information scientists to identify at-risk populations and get that knowledge into the hands of government and community stakeholders. We serve at the nexus of engineering, science, and community.
Example Projects
- Resilient Rural Infrastructure
This proposal explores how to achieve adaptive resilience for Gulf coastal communities, which has the potential to extend to infrastructure resilience of other rural communities and aims to foster a new understanding of the complex interactions among the key elements of community resilience in rural coastline areas. - SCC-CIVIC-FA Track B: Rural Resiliency Hubs
An Integrated, Community-Centered Approach to Addressing the Resiliency Divide through Rural Public Libraries This project catalyzes three of the many key learnings from our Stage 1 efforts to a pilot a community-based co-design process for public library resiliency hubs in rural Calhoun County, Florida. The project will establish a community-based design process for resiliency hubs located in and operated through rural public libraries. - Using Computer Vision and Deep Learning Techniques to Extract Roadway Geometry Features from Aerial Images
This project develops automated tools to detect the roadway features such as school zone markings, lane configurations (i.e., turning lanes lengths, and lane, shoulder and median widths), and sidewalks (i.e., presence or absence of sidewalks) from high resolution aerial images using deep learning-based object detection models in the State of Florida. - Selection of Level Crossings for Closure in the State of Florida
An Optimization-based Approach Safety at level crossings, where highway segments intersect a railroad at the same elevation, remains one of the major concerns in Florida, considering a significant number of accidents reported every year. Closure of level crossings can be viewed as an effective alternative to address the issue of level crossing safety. This project aims to develop a novel optimization model and a decision support system that can assist the Florida Department of Transportation with the selection of level crossings for closure, aiming to maximize the total expected benefit from these closures. - Excellence in Research: Integrated Hazard and Traffic Modeling for Massive Evacuation in Florida under Uncertainty of Hurricane Track
Considering that large and high-density populations concentrated in Florida coast are vulnerable to hurricane impacts, it is extremely necessary and significant to prepare massive hurricane evacuation plans with considerations of the uncertainty of hurricane tracks. Based on the significant needs for massive evacuations for hurricanes in Florida, this study aims to:- conduct uncertainty analysis of hurricane tracks;
- conduct modeling of hurricane-induced coastal hazards;
- develop massive emergency evacuation models;
- develop an optimization methodology to maximize the accessibility and capacity of hurricane shelters.
- RAPID: The Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on Municipal Solid Waste Management Systems
This project aims to collect ephemeral data on the longitudinal impact of the coronavirus pandemic municipal solid waste management systems (MSWMSs) in Florida, New York, and California. Since the impact of the coronavirus on MSWMSs and their responses vary across states and from urban to a rural setting, these data can be used to (i) identify and characterize a broad range of regional waste management challenges, (ii) track the emerging adaptive behaviors different system entities take to adequately operate municipal waste services, and (iii) specify the system requirements and characteristics (i.e., system composition, topology, and control) that enable successful adaptation during a pandemic.