pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

PacTrans participated in the second annual Safety Summit of USDOT University Transportation Centers hosted by Carnegie Mellon University in Washington DC on March 30 and 31.

The summit brought together all of the UTCs whose current focuses are in safety with an attendance of 70 participants.  The objectives included creating a community to highlight requirements and domain of transportation safety and for UTCs to get to know each other and leverage one another’s activities.  It was great hearing from panelists and their perspectives from government, industry and community. Presentations made by the different UTCs on active and completed research, workforce development and outreach were very informative, interesting and at best, exciting, ranging from emerging technologies, sensors, connected vehicles, automation, crash data, big data, and many more.

PacTrans Director, Yinhai Wang, gave one such presentation on some of the research projects PacTrans is involved in such as STAR Lab’s DriveNet, unmanned aircraft systems, collision avoidance technologies and collaboration with agencies and private sector such as Microsoft, Verizon Wireless, eCityGovAlliance and others on smart cities regional workshop. The takeaway was getting UTCs’ programs aligned with USDOT priorities on safety research. Top on the list of USDOT priorities as named by the panelists on government perspective included: data and systems, human factors, connected vehicles deployment and impact, automated vehicles technology and impacts, safety management systems, and data collection and analyses.