Big Data

Big data may lead to safer roadways, lower emissions

Teresa Donnellan — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:26:19 +0000

Big data may lead to safer roadways, lower emissions Teresa Donnellan Mon, 10/23/2023 - 12:26

In This Story

Once, transportation officials made decisions based on household surveys performed roughly once per decade, which asked selected households to record their travel behavior on a given day. With the advent of smartphones, similar data became available roughly every few minutes. Now, with an increasing number of connected vehicles on the road, that data is available in nearly real time. CEIE professor Shanjiang Zhu is embracing this shift, exploring the capabilities of researchers with this massive amount of data.

With funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), Zhu and his research team, Anand N. Vidyashankar from the department of statistics and Chenfeng Xiong from the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Villanova University, will reconcile the travel data from three different sources—surveys, smartphones, and connected vehicles—into invaluable travel information.

"In the past, we tried to understand travel behavior, which is critical for future investment decisions and also transportation policy, based on survey data,” Zhu explained. “Based on that, you understand, on average, where people have traveled, in what mode, with whom, and spent how much time there, uh what is the purpose for the trip, etc. Using that information, you can develop a model that basically can predict future scenario, like how congested the network could be in 2040; and that drives all the investment decisions and policy debates.” This method introduces problems of timeliness, as it can skip major events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and human error, as people would not necessarily remember every detail of their travel on a given day.

The introduction of widespread smartphone use about ten years ago made the available data much denser, said Zhu, resulting in about one data point every three to five minutes. Each time a person’s smartphone app calls for location service, their location is automatically registered. Nevertheless, this method introduced a bias problem, as not everyone owns a smartphone and not everyone uses them often.

About a year ago, Zhu’s team won a competition hosted by VDOT to make the best possible use of connected vehicle data, basically newer vehicles like those with an “SOS” button installed. One drawback to the data currently is connected vehicles currently make up a relatively small share of vehicles on the road.

“But we have ways to make corrections from a statistical perspective, and then this gives you a much more accurate picture of traffic on the road,” said Zhu, adding “On average, it's one data point every three seconds. With such data, the accuracy and timeliness of travel demand models could be greatly improved.” Zhu noted his colleague Vidyashankar will be reviewing the data fusion to ensure a rigorous statistical approach.

The new data also opens the door for new safety studies, Zhu said, adding safety studies are currently based mainly on police reports after an accident has occurred. By using alternate data, such as how often a car’s brake deceleration rate exceeds a certain threshold or how hard a driver turns the steering wheel, dangerous locations might be addressed before an accident occurs. Zhu is interested in exploring the topic further using the dataset resulting from his current project.

Zhu foresees data from connected vehicles becoming increasingly important as more and more people adopt the technology. He said, “Now we are investing in the methodology part and seeing how we can make this connection more productive, to improve the driving environment, to make our roads safer, to make the driving experience better, and also to reduce our energy consumption and emissions."

Topics

Department of Civil Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering (CEIE)

transportation engineering

Big Data

big data analytics

Transportation Policy Operations and Logistics

Research

CEC faculty research

Mason team collaborates with the World Bank to launch MASH-Pandemics: A Portal to support Models for Assessing Strategies for Hospitals (MASH) through COVID-19 and other pandemics

4429684e-ae8d-405e-870a-3b7aefe68162 (Martha Bushong) — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 17:16:39 +0000

Mason team collaborates with the World Bank to launch MASH-Pandemics: A Portal to support Models for Assessing Strategies for Hospitals (MASH) through COVID-19 and other pandemics 4429684e-ae8d-… Mon, 04/20/2020 - 13:16

Professor Elise Miller-Hooks

George Mason University professor Elise Miller-Hooks and her team have been studying and modeling the flow of patients through American hospitals in times of crisis since 2014. Now, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are collaborating with Mason alumna Mersedeh Tariverdi (PhD ’17) who is a Senior Data Scientist in the Health, Nutrition, and Population Group at the World Bank to launch a web portal that will support models that aids hospital responses to the pandemic.

The team’s work supports evidence-based decision making, informed by the models, to rethink and facilitate hospital operations in utilizing limited critical resources as demand surges. While working as a PhD student under Miller-Hooks’ supervision, Tariverdi developed key models that now serve as the backbone for the MASH-Pandemics portal.

Mersedah Tariverdim, PhD, '17

Only hours after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, graduate students working with Miller-Hooks began incorporating personal protective equipment, ventilators, and COVID-19 patients with their care paths into the models. Disposable equipment such as face masks and permanent equipment like ventilators are treated differently. The models allow the team to assess alternative capacity enhancement and demand management strategies, crisis standards of care options, and hospital collaboration measures in a dynamically changing environment.

“We’re working as fast as we can because the need is so urgent and the crisis is enormous. This effort is about health care worker safety and helping the hospitals cope with the pandemic,” says Miller-Hooks. “It’s about saving lives, as well as the efficient and equitable allocation of resources.”

The work can help hospitals to best cope with surge demand in spite of limited resources. It can aid decision-makers in regional response and hospital collaboration planning with health care facilities offering various levels of care. It can inform decisions on the mobilization of critical supplies, supplemental space, including tents and ships, and teams of frontline health care workers and other first responders to where they are needed the most.

"We’re working as fast as we can because the need is so urgent and the crisis is enormous. This effort is about health care worker safety and helping the hospitals cope with the pandemic. It’s about saving lives, as well as the efficient and equitable allocation of resources."

Elise Miller-Hooks

The models highlight general recommendations made based on findings that assume a generic urban hospital design and crisis standards of care approaches to treating patients in this pandemic. Hospital administrators and others working in an official capacity can request runs of the MASH-Pandemics models through the portal to help them with decision-making tailored for their hospitals or group of hospitals working in collaboration.

This effort builds on previously developed sophisticated discrete-event simulation models to replicate operations in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. MASH-Pandemics was developed on a patient-based, resource-constrained, multi-unit hospital model originally designed for assessing hospital preparedness to serve emergency patients in a surge, pandemic, mass casualty incident, and disaster events.

“Our models are unique for several reasons,” says Miller-Hooks. “If you look at most other hospital models, and there are many out there, they generally focus on single key units and are designed for routine operations,” she says. “Sometimes they’ll include two units. Our model tracks patients along their entire care paths, along with physical resources and staff through ten essential units. The models are very detailed as is needed to capture the complexities of their operations. We do not know of other models that have considered mass casualty incidents at this level.

“Our recommendations rely on feedback from collaborating disaster and emergency medicine experts from Johns Hopkins University including Lauren Sauer and Scott Levin, as well as Thomas Kirsch,” says Miller-Hooks. “World Bank Group’s engagement brings a global perspective to the collaboration, and this perspective is critical in aiding hospitals at the frontlines of this world-wide emergency in resource-scarce settings.”

For more information about the project go to mash-pandemics.vse.gmu.edu

People Mentioned in This Story

Elise Miller-Hooks

Visit the MASH Pandemics Site

Topics

Big Data

Healthcare Technology

CEC faculty research

Data from digital twin helps engineers track structural integrity

Nanci Hellmich — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 17:55:22 +0000

Data from digital twin helps engineers track structural integrity Nanci Hellmich Wed, 10/16/2019 - 13:55

“Whether it’s a ship, a bridge, or a building, we collect all kinds of data over its life cycle, but we don’t do a good job of tracking that data over time to find long-term trends.”

— David Lattanzi, associate professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering

Civil engineering associate professor David Lattanzi is developing new methods to categorize and leverage data to assess structures’ condition and possibilities for future use.

When Dave Lattanzi worked as a structural inspector, he saw that the way that civil engineers monitored, inspected, and maintained buildings, tunnels, and other structures could be smarter and more efficient.

“There weren’t any quantitative techniques we could use. Everything was very subjective,” says Lattanzi, the John Toups Faculty Fellow in civil engineering and associate professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering.

“Whether it’s a ship, a bridge, or a building, we collect all kinds of data over its life cycle,” he says, “but we don’t do a good job of tracking that data over time to find long-term trends.”

Lattanzi figured there had to be a better way, so he and a team of five Mason students are developing new methods to categorize and leverage data to assess structures’ condition and possibilities for future use.

He has applied this method to many types of infrastructure for years and is now exploring new data-driven approaches to the life cycle monitoring and assessment of U.S Navy ships.

One approach is the creation of a “digital twin” of a ship, a complex virtual model that evolves with the physical ship, which will provide a platform for visualization and assessment. “The digital twin will be filled with the information we collect about the ship over time,” Lattanzi says.

In theory, this data would improve decision making. For instance, if the Navy wants to deploy a 15-year-old vessel, they can look to the digital twin for clues on what situations the ship can withstand, including whether it can go into rougher water, he says.

Lattanzi, who has received more than $400,000 in funding from the Office of Naval Research, is working with Navy researchers to assess the strength and capacity of ships through advanced sensing methods. Plus, he provides training and guidance to naval researchers and staff on advanced sensing and reconnaissance techniques.

His research is also supported by a faculty fellowship through a gift from the late John Toups, an entrepreneur, civil engineer, and Northern Virginia businessman. “The fellowship is helping me explore the digital twin idea and share my findings with the professional and academic community,” Lattanzi says.

“John Toups was an impressive community and professional leader, and it’s a tremendous honor to hold a fellowship in his name. I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet him.”

This story appeared in Mason's Spirit magazine.