Environment

Regional Mobility Impacts Assessment of Highway Automation

Miller, Mark A.
Bresnock, Anne
Shladover, Steven E.
Lechner, Edward H.
Loannou, Petros A.
1997

Urban traffic congestion and air pollution are crucial issues in most metropolitan areas, but are more acute in Southern California than in most other North American regions. The PATH Program at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley and the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) have investigated some of the long-term regional impacts that could result from implementation of advanced highway technologies (automation and electrification) in the Los Angeles area. This chapter focuses on the evaluation of mobility impacts of highway...

Truck CACC System Designand DSRC Messages

Lu, Xiao-Yun
Shladover, Steven
2018

This report documents the modeling, control design and implementation logic of the CACC (Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control).  Intuitively, CACC is based on ACC by adding intervehicle communication. This does not mean that CACC control design is simply adopting ACC control design with DSRC passed information from the forward vehicle(s). The deep reason is that: ACC control does not need to consider string stability in multi-vehicle following since it is for a single vehicle. It is fine as long as the feedback control is robustly stable with respect to all the disturbances from...

Mobility and Energy Consumption Impacts of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Vehicle Strings on Freeway Corridors

Liu, Hao
Lu, Xiao-Yun
Shladover, Steven E.
2020

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) vehicle string operations have the potential to improve significantly the mobility and energy consumption performance of congested freeway corridors. This study examines the impact of CACC string operations on vehicle speed and fuel economy on the 13-mi SR-99 corridor, near Sacramento, CA. It extends the existing body of knowledge by performing a multi-scenario simulation analysis of the freeway corridor. A simulation study evaluated the performance of the corridor under various CACC market penetration scenarios and traffic demand inputs. The CACC...

Truck automation operational concept alternatives

Shladover, Steven E.
2010

This paper defines a comprehensive range of operational concepts for automating the driving of heavy trucks. These concepts are defined in terms of the amount of driving functionality that is transferred from the driver to the automated system and the roadway conditions in which the trucks would operate. With the minimum amount of automation (providing only safety warnings to drivers) it should be feasible and safe to operate in any roadway environment, but with the maximum use of automation operations must be restricted to simplified and protected driving environments to keep the...

Urban and Socioeconomic Disparities in PM2.5 Exposure Across 340 Latin American Cities

Ascencio, Edson J
Barja, Anthony
Montes-Alvis, Jose M
Kephart, Josiah L.
Gouveia, Nelson
Benmarhnia, Tarik
Diez Roux, Ana V.
Bilal, Usama
Miranda, J. Jaime
Carrasco-Escobar, Gabriel
Rodríguez, Daniel A.
2025

Background: Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a leading global health risk. Latin American cities exhibit some of the world's highest urban PM2.5 levels, yet studies on neighborhood-level PM2.5 exposure and associated disparities in the region are limited. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional ecological analysis of 53,041 neighborhoods across 340 cities in eight Latin American countries, leveraging the SALURBAL dataset. Annual PM2.5 concentrations were derived from satellite data and linked to socioeconomic and urban characteristics. A multilevel model analyzed associations between...

A New Method for the Direct Measurement of Parking Incentive Response Curve

Tang, Dounan
Sengupta, Raja
2018

Knowing parking price response curve allows one to set the price right. This response curve is often estimated by observing changes in occupancy concomitant with small changes of price. In the authors' Value Pricing Pilot (VPP) Program study, called FlexPassPlus, the authors have used a new method to measure this quantity. By setting up repeated 2nd price auctions via an app the authors were able to get a lot more information about elasticity than through a traditional change-the-price-and-see-what-happens experiment. This leads to a better understanding of the parking incentive response...

A Runtime System for Logical-Space Programming

Pereira, Eloi
Krainer, Clemens
Da Silva, Pedro Marques
Kirsch, Christoph M.
Sengupta, Raja
2015

In this paper we introduce logical-space programming, a spatial computing paradigm where programs have access to a logical space model, i.e., names and explicit relations over such names, while the runtime system is in charge of manipulating the physical space. Mobile devices such as autonomous vehicles are equipped with sensors and actuators that provide means for computation to react upon spatial information and produce effects over the environment. The spatial behavior of these systems is commonly specified at the physical level, e.g., GPS coordinates. This puts the responsibility for...

A Virtual Reality Environment for Developing and Testing Autonomous UAV-Based Structural Inspection

Peng, Xin
Su, Gaofeng
Chen, ZhiQiang
Sengupta, Raja
2023

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with imaging and laser sensors have shown their benefits in structural health inspection due to their aerial mobility, low cost, and efficiency. However, UAV applications in practice are limited by their level of automation, and man-piloted operation dominates to date. With vehicle automation on the horizon, autonomous structural inspection systems via robotic vehicles have become a possibility. Nonetheless, significant challenges exist for testing and validating in a physical environment. This paper proposes a virtual reality framework for...

Analyzing the Economic Benefits and Costs of Smart Growth

Chatman, Daniel G.
Rayle, Lisa
Gabbe, C. J.
Plowman, Johnathan
Sohn, Paul
Crane, Rebecca
Spevack, Anne
Wise, Ella
Stoy, Kelan
Giottonini, M. Paloma
Ordower, Aaron
Crane, Randall
2016

California’s Senate Bill 375, (Chapter 728, Statutes of 2008), aims to reduce transportation related greenhouse gas emissions through more efficient patterns of land development. Advocates claim these smart growth policies will reduce vehicle travel while benefiting residents, cities, and regions in the form of more attractive communities, more affordable housing, and healthier municipal finances. In this study, the authors analyzed the economic impacts of existing smart growth plans similar to those currently being considered and adopted throughout metropolitan California. Through...

Autonomous UAV-Based Structural Damage Exploration Platform for Post-Disaster Reconnaissance

Peng, Xin
Su, Gaofeng
Folk, Benjamin
Chen, ZhiQiang
Sengupta, Raja
2024

Rapid structural health inspection process is essential for post-disaster reconnaissance.
Nowadays, visual inspection still dominates the practice, which is time-consuming, expensive,
and unsafe. To reduce labor costs and guarantee personnel safety, we develop a fully
autonomous UAV-based structural damage exploration platform that explores and rebuilds post disaster environment maps with limited prior information. As a result, environment maps can be
used for further damage detection and risk evaluation. The proposed platform implements a
closed-loop control strategy...