UTRC Press Release
Friday, January 31, 2014
Contact: Nadia Aslam
Assistant Director for Technology Transfer
University Transportation Research Center - Region 2
Tel: 212-650-8051
Email: nadia@utrc2.org
The University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) Publishes the Final Report: "Leveraging Brightness from Transportation Lighting Systems through Light Source Color: Implications for Energy Use and Safety for Traffic and Pedestrians"
UTRC has released a final report for the research titled: "Leveraging Brightness from Transportation Lighting Systems through Light Source Color: Implications for Energy Use and Safety for Traffic and Pedestrians", funded by the Research and Innovative Technology Administration/USDOT (RITA). The principal investigator was Dr. John D. Bullough, a senior research scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Roadway transportation lighting is installed for multiple reasons including traffic safety and pedestrian security. Judgments of pedestrian safety and security along roadways are not strictly correlated to specified light levels, but the color of the light source influences pedestrians' judgments as well. In general, the brighter a roadway location appears, the safer and more secure it is judged as being. The present laboratory study used lighting varying in color in order to help understand the mechanisms underlying brightness perception.
In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of vehicles equipped with GPS devices. These devices generate huge volumes of trace data, and information extracted from these traces could significantly help transportation planners with routine tasks and special studies. However, extracting information from trace data is a challenging problem because of the proliferation of GPS devices and the rate at which trace data is generated. One approach for handling this problem is to compress the GPS data in such a way that the amount of information lost due to compression is as small as possible. During the period of this project, our focus was on the design, implementation and evaluation of GPS trajectory compression algorithms that can achieve specified compression rates while minimizing the information loss due to compression. Our work has led to new algorithms for compressing single and multiple GPS traces.
The full report is available for a free download at the UTRC website: http://www.utrc2.org/publications/final-leveraging-brightness-light-sour...
About the University Transportation Research Center (UTRC)
The University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) is a USDOT Regional Transportation Center addressing surface transportation operations, management, design economics and planning. The Region 2 University Transportation Research Center is one of ten original National Centers, established in 1987, in recognition that transportation plays a key role in the nation’s economy and in the quality of people’s lives. Located at the City University of New York, the Center is a Consortium of 17 major Academic Institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico. Through the Grant supporting the Center, the mission incorporates research, education and the transfer of technology in the field of transportation. Academically based, the work of Faculty and Students – graduate and undergraduate provide a critical link in resolving our national and regional transportation problems while training the future and current professionals who address our transportation system and their customers on a daily basis. For more information, visit www.utrc2.org.