Integrating Socioeconomic Vulnerability Into Resilient Infrastructure Planning
Transportation networks are a vital lifeline essential to the functionality of modern society. A newly published research report offers a new methodology for assessing transportation network vulnerability and resilience, with a particular focus on incorporating social vulnerability into the analysis.
Why? Vulnerable populations—such as people with low income, minorities, or seniors—could suffer higher levels of adverse impacts from disruptions. Road closures and other transportation network interruptions due to earthquakes, floods or other disasters may disproportionately affect these groups of people.
The research project, "Integrate Socioeconomic Vulnerability for Resilient Transportation Infrastructure Planning," by Liming Wang, John MacArthur, and Yu Xiao of Portland State University (PSU), addresses a critical gap by integrating socioeconomic vulnerability indicators into the evaluation of transportation infrastructure vulnerabilities.
The report demonstrates this novel methodology using the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area as a case study.
WHAT DOES THE METHODOLOGY OFFER?
The new methodology proposed by the research team combines spatial analysis, network modeling, and social vulnerability indices to identify critical links in the transportation system. It assesses the impact of potential disruptions on accessibility to...
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When developing a city’s infrastructure, considering the needs of every demographic is vital for the health and success of the community. One vulnerable group is older adults (defined in this project as people aged fifty or older). The purpose of the project, called "Understanding Travel Behavior and Accessibility for Older Adults: A Comprehensive Framework," was to learn about the transportation habits of older adults and develop a way to mathematically measure accessibility (the ability to access transportation) of older adults. Researchers from the University of Utah used those findings to understand the challenges older adults faced. They hope that their findings will be used to improve older adults’ lives and, in turn, the lives of those around them.
To examine the travel behavior of older adults, the researchers employed two strategies: they distributed a survey and conducted a focus group. They reached 724 older adults with the survey, which was distributed across the state of Utah in paper and online formats. In the survey, participants were asked to rank their four most preferred activities and answer questions regarding transportation to and from those activities. Using those responses, the researchers measured the older adults’ travel behaviors and travel satisfaction. Travel behaviors were measured using travel frequency,...
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Three dissertations supported by funding from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) take on different transportation challenges, exploring ways to improve safety and connectivity in communities. Farzin Maniei, Adrian Cottam, and Kyu Ri Kim all completed their doctoral research with support from the NITC program. Read on to learn more about each of their projects.
Adrian Cottam, University of Arizona
Machine Learning and Big Data-Based Approaches for Quality Freeway Volumes
"If you boil it down, the whole purpose of my dissertation is to take existing resources that DOTs have, and try and make better use of them. For example, the Arizona Department of Transportation has loop detectors, but only in the Phoenix region. So it's a very small area out of the total...
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The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Student Chapter at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) attended the national ITE conference in Philadelphia this past July. Six UTA students—Peirong Wang, Swastik Khadka, Mino Aji, Md Ashraful Imran, Sijan Shrestha and Andrew Mares—were able to showcase their talents on the national stage under the guidance of UTA faculty member Taylor Li.
Along with a fellow UTA student group, the Intelligent Transportation Society (ITS) student chapter, the students were also selected as finalists in the highly competitive transportation technology tournament, hosted by National Operations Center of Excellence and USDOT Research and Technology.
Swastik Khadka, who serves as President of the ITE student chapter, presented research on "Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures (ATSPMs) in the Loop Simulation: A Digital Twin Approach" at the conference and was nominated for the best paper award.
Finally, the ITE student chapter received a nomination for the student chapter momentum award by TexITE, the Texas District of ITE, highlighting the dedication and impact of UTA's transportation student leaders.
The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is proud to celebrate the recognition and success of these outstanding transportation students.
The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is one of seven U.S. Department of Transportation national university...
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When Kyu Ri Kim was seven years old, she was struck by a car while walking in her neighborhood where there was no separate walkway for pedestrians in Seoul, South Korea.
Kim, who is now an adjunct research associate at Portland State University (PSU), received nerve damage in her legs and had to use a wheelchair for several days after the incident. This experience launched her interest in pedestrian safety, which eventually led to her 2024 doctoral dissertation research project: "The Central Role of Perceived Safety in Connecting Crash Risk Factors and Walking Behavior."
"That was the real starting point, my personal experience. And I'm curious whether other people really do understand the real risk around them. What are the crash risk factors around them and how are they different from individual perceived risk?" Kim said.
Her dissertation, supported by funding from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), illuminates the relationship between pedestrian crash risk factors and perceived safety, as well as the relationship between safety attitudes and walking behavior. How the interplay between these factors influences people's behavior...
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The Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans) is the Regional University Transportation Center (UTC) for Federal Region 10, housed at University of Washington (UW).
In June of 2023, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), or Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), awarded PacTrans its fourth competitive grant of $15 million over 5 years. With that award, Portland State University (PSU) joined PacTrans. The center is a mobility-focused University Transportation Center with a theme of, “developing human-centered and transformative multimodal mobility solutions for an equitable Pacific Northwest.”
Each year, PacTrans provides PSU with $150,000 to fund “small research projects.” Those projects are selected through a competitive, peer-review process. The Year 2 Request for Proposals (PDF) describes the process for PSU researchers to submit proposals for these funds. PSU plans to award no more than three projects. Therefore, individual project requests should range from $30,000 to $70,000.
Abstracts are due August 8, with full...
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Jennifer Dill, director of Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), has been named the inaugural editor-in-chief of the Transportation Research Record (TRR). The TRR—the flagship journal of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board (TRB)—is one of the most cited and prolific transportation journals in the world, offering wide coverage of transportation-related topics.
While maintaining her current role as the director of TREC, Dill will begin her duties at TRR on July 15, collaborating with the TRR team and TRB volunteers to enhance the journal’s role in improving the nation's transportation system through high-quality research.
"The Transportation Research Record and TRB have played key roles in my scholarly and professional career. My very first peer-reviewed journal article was published in TRR based on research I did as an undergraduate student with my mentor, Dr. Dan Sperling. That opportunity opened my eyes to the possibility of being a researcher and professor," Dill said.
Prior to entering academia, Dill worked as an environmental and transportation planner at the federal and regional levels. When she first...
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You probably don’t live, work, socialize, go to school, and receive health care all in the same place. To get where you need to go in your day-to-day life, you need some form of transportation to get there. But what if that transportation is unavailable? It stands to reason that not being able to get where you need to go would have detrimental effects on your well-being.
To identify transportation disadvantages in their respective cities, professors from the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Arizona, and the University of Tennessee teamed up to design and test a travel diary app called MyAmble. Travel diaries are built for recording trips taken, but they often lack the ability to capture travel disadvantage or latent travel demand. In this context, travel disadvantage refers to essential trips that people plan to take but are unable to complete for some reason, e.g., their car breaks down or they don’t have gas money. Latent travel demand refers to trips that people would take but don’t bother to plan due to transportation barriers or safety concerns. The aim of MyAmble...
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Homes, Not Offices: Researchers Recommend Changes to Transit Station Area Development After COVID-19
A new report offers lessons for post-pandemic transit policy and planning. Notably, it calls for planners to downplay the role of offices in transit station areas and increase the opportunity for people to live in them. Researchers Arthur C. Nelson and Robert Hibberd published "Transit Station Area Development and Demographic Outcomes (PDF)," updating their longitudinal analysis of the impacts of development near transit stations.
The new report includes a foreword by U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer. An excerpt reads:
Read more"In this report, Arthur C. Nelson, Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning and Real Estate Development at the University of Arizona, and Robert Hibberd, a doctoral student, chronical numerous economic and demographic changes that occurred in transit station areas between the Great Recession that ended in 2009 and the pandemic that started in 2020. Through detailed analysis of 57 transit systems operating...
According to new research, transit-oriented development (TOD) can address the equity challenge of "spatial mismatch," where urban residents are isolated from relevant employment centers, and significantly improve employment access.
"Job-Worker Balance & Polycentric Transit-Oriented Development: Toward Indices and Spatio-temporal Trends," funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), examines how transit-oriented development (TOD) affects employment access and addresses urban equity challenges, particularly in the context of essential workers and the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to demonstrating that TOD can help mitigate spacial mismatch, the study also highlights that TOD can lower transportation costs and enhance job-worker balance by providing more accessible central locations. Additionally, higher levels of spatial density and land use mix can aid in managing pandemics by improving access to essential jobs, which often involve low-income occupations that require face-to-face interactions.
The dissertation's author, Robert Hibberd, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona (UA). An Eisenhower Fellow and NITC Dissertation Fellow, Hibberd devoted his doctoral research to exploring how the spatial distribution of resources and infrastructure in cities affects access to employment and essential services, ...
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Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) maintains two large, public transportation data lakes: PORTAL and BikePed Portal. The latest round of funding for PORTAL, in the amount of $1.6 million, was awarded in February 2024 and will cover PORTAL's activities through the next five years. BikePed Portal, too, recently received $100K for another year of funding, and both are the focus of some exciting innovations in transportation data.
The two centralized data repositories, unique both in their size and in the fact that they are accessible (PORTAL is freely available to the public, and BikePed Portal has limited public access as well), are supported by multiple federal, state, and regional agencies. Federal funding for PORTAL comes from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)'s Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG) funding, suballocated by Metro’s ...
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