New Research Grants

Category
Research Highlights
Dr. Rae Zimmerman of New York University received funding for three new research projects and is principal investigator on:
  • January 15, 2013 – December 31, 2013, National Science Foundation funded “RAPID/Collaborative Research: Collection of Perishable Hurricane Sandy Data on Weather-Related Damage to Urban Power and Transit Infrastructure,” with the U. of Washington (lead) and Louisiana State University .

This Rapid Response Research Grant (RAPID) will collect perishable damage data in connection with Hurricane Sandy that made landfall on October 29, 2012. The research covers weather, storm surge and floods, power outage, transit stoppage, and interdependencies of infrastructures in New York Metropolitan area. The research team at the three universities will apply various techniques for data collection including ground-based observations, satellite data, and aerial and water-based survey maps. (Abstract excerpted from the NSF award).

  • September 1, 2013 – August 31, 2013, NYU-Wagner Faculty Research Fund grant, “The Disconnectedness of the Poor from Urban Public Services.”

This research focuses on how policy and planning decisions by public service providers affect the distribution of certain services, particularly public transportation, to outlying portions of urban areas where poorer people tend to live (as distinct from patterns of previous decades where the poor tended to concentrate primarily in inner city areas). Public transportation in turn supports other kinds of services such as the provision of supplies and access to jobs. Census data is used to relate transit access to poverty conditions.

  • October 1, 2013 – December 31, 2013, UTRC funded faculty research grant on “Promoting Transportation Flexibility in Extreme Events through Multi-Modal Connectivity.”

Extreme events of all kinds are increasing in either number or severity. Transportation provides vital support to people in such circumstances for evacuation and supplies, yet is often disabled in such disasters. Nationwide and in New York and New Jersey record-setting weather disasters have occurred, and transportation impacts are temporary or involve long-term network closures. Transportation is heavily dependent on electric power with increasing dependence on information technology. When disasters affect these other infrastructures, transportation effects are magnified. Disadvantaged populations are particularly vulnerable to lack of access to vehicles, travel routes, and transportation services. The concentration of infrastructure facilities and usage increases the vulnerability, taking the form of the convergence of roadways at single intersections or the convergence of rail lines at single transfer points. Multi-modal connections support flexibility by providing multiple travel alternatives. To analyze multi-modal connectivity’s role in reducing risks in extreme events, selected multi-modal facilities in the region will be identified for transit using several national transit and road transportation databases. Geographic coverage, capacity, usage, number and type of interconnections, and extreme event experience and capacity for each facility will be defined and statistical summaries provided. A case-based approach will provide analyses of types of multi-modal facilities that have been successful or unsuccessful in emergencies and cover experiences of disadvantaged populations in the UTRC region.